Hollow

there is an emptiness, even as the hours cram-up with twitter feeds, Facebook messages, emails, text messages and offline chat messages. none of them compare to how you look at me and can't bear to look away.

On Sunday mornings

I stumble out of bed
at 4 am
at the sound of my own singing
on the phone
and catch a brief
glimpse of you
in the bathroom mirror
reflecting
my disheveled self.

of moles and memory

every time i stretch my arms over the key board, a mole on the inner-elbow of my right arm glances at me and passes, as my arms turn down and i begin to type. nevertheless, the mole is there, bending down over my lap as i continue typing.

then there's this other mole on my nose- exactly where women have their nose-piercing in all the communities in Nepal, except for the Newars- which has always encouraged people to ask me if i am Rai. i always smile at the approach that i should nearly pass-off for a Rai. from the time i was in school, i thought of being mistaken as so much fun. still do. to belong like that is to unbelong.

another mole on my face, on my jawbone on the right, making my face almost fragile, but not quite. one can only tell it is there if the face has been in view for hours and at a proximity. but the one on my neck is almost always visible- showing off the lines on my neck, speaking of age that's begging to sit on me with a promise of making me quiet, if not more graceful.

the one where my waist ends- only i and mamu and one more person seem to know of.

the one on my right leg is the faintest. but always there.

ajee used to say, girls who have moles on their legs travel right across the world. often, when nights are about shutting my eyes and counting sheep to put myself to sleep, i wonder if the traveling she mentioned was in the physical sense or just my mind crossing seas to seek out people from the past, who i thought i forgot and never did.

Saturdays with Aki

Aki's fur is soft against my feet. That's her favourite place to be. Sometimes, she raises her head, her chin perched on my thighs and looks out at the world, like she was an old woman, brooding over a major problem.

Aki is such an attention-seeker! Like me. Narcissist too. The other day, she was licking herself in the mirror. Just like I like to read my own words over and over before turning them in to the editor.

On Saturdays, I get to catch her flinging her toys in the air, and catch. I get to cook her meals and watch her relish it. I also get to see Mamu and Aki talk to each other in a weird lingo. And how she pushes herself next to Mamu, just to remain close to her.

Best part of a Saturday is when I get to look up between work and rest my eyes on her baby face- a respite from the computer screen, or look up from my book to a moment completely stolen by her innocence.

To be able to love unconditionally like she does, without hoping that I'll love her back and yet love me without shame and guilt before the world for the way she feels. I want to learn to love like that. Selflessly. Without reason.

and so i write

in the last 30 minutes, i've emptied mamu's bottled achar, finished all the cheese in the ref, spooned out the peanut butter till the jar was only half-full and searched the kitchen shelves to see if i could also find something extremely spicy, sweet, crunchy.

i've also eyed Chhori's pedigree for an instant and then looked away in guilt.

before that, i lay tossing and turning in my bed, with a thousand things crossing my mind like it always does the moment i decide it's time to sleep and cross over the threshold, to where images of gore and slime await me.

and then in the midst of digging out the sticky peanut butter and sticking the spoon in my mouth, so that the butter slid down my throat in all thickness, i realized, the madness for food was because the thoughts were not falling into place. and they were not falling into place because i hadn't found a white space to put it down on and then fiddle the chaos into order.

and then i decided, no matter how badly i write, i shall write for the sake of putting myself to sleep, so that i no more lay tossing-turning, waiting for sleep to come and drown me.

i write- no matter how badly- to keep heartbreaks in place, to give concreteness to memories and to let my fingers tap dance, when the rest of my body wants to give in to the lure of a jar of peanut butter, a box of sweets, a bag of cheese-potato crisps and the touch of a hand that corrupts my soul.