You entered me—the way warmth steals into a wooden house on a winter night—into the walls, the floor, the fibers of cloth, so deep into a sleeping body that cold had hidden itself for years. No one sees that fire, only feels it—trembling stops, muscles soften, and the breath caught in fear within the cage of the chest releases itself slowly—the way a caged bird releases itself, the one that had forgotten what sky was. You are that releasing, you are that remembered sky.
I was a locked room—there were windows, but the curtains drawn, a door, but bolted shut…from inside, by my own hands. Inside were furnishings—a chair, but no one ever sat, a table, but no one ever set down a cup of tea, a bed, but no one ever pulled a blanket over me into sleep. Dust had settled on every surface, spiders had woven their webs in corner after corner, and silence had grown so thick that if you pressed your ear to the wall, you could hear it—the room weeping, quietly, the way people weep alone at night, face buried in the pillow, so that sorrow wouldn't become someone else's burden.
You came to that room—without asking, shoes left at the door, stepping soft, the way the scent of earth comes before rain—no one summons it, but it arrives, because earth needs it, and the sky needs to be emptied. You drew back the curtains, and for the first time in years, light fell across the floor—not harsh, but tender, the way a sister's hand falls on a motherless forehead burning with fever—and in that light the dust particles danced, as if they too had been waiting, as if they too knew—someone would come, someone would one day call this room a home.
The world says—balance in the giving and taking, accounts and ledgers. You kept no ledger. You gave the way earth gives—never asking the seed what tree it will become, whether it will bear fruit, whether it will cast shadow—only making space, only holding it in darkness, only saying without sound—now, grow. I grew in your darkness, in your patience, in your asking for nothing—which is the greatest gift this world can offer.
Now, in the room inside me, every brick bears the print of your fingers. There are words that rise to my throat, halt there, wet my eyes, then sink back into my chest—they cannot become language, because language is small, language is not enough. But they reach you another way—through the pressure of your hand, in sitting silent beside me, in watching the sky together, in matching the rhythm of our breath—where no one speaks anything, and the not-speaking becomes complete, the way night completes itself into dawn—without announcement, without proof, only light arriving to say—here I am, I have come, as I come every day, as I will come forever.
You hold me tight—
the way the ocean explains the grammar of silence.
You gaze at me with intensity—
the way tears hide in the depths of the eyes.
You search for me in upheaval—
the way the destination pauses at the bend in the road.
Ignoring every law of this world—
you gave me all your love.
All the wild growth within me…
you cleared to build a home.
Words I keep deep in my chest,
in the depths of touch, you remain.
# Dust Knew Too The old woman sat on the veranda, her fingers moving through the beads of her rosary with the mechanical precision of long habit. Her name was Malini, though few called her that anymore. To the neighbourhood children, she was simply *Dida*—grandmother, keeper of stories, dispenser of jaggery and reproof in equal measure. It was the third week of April, and the heat had begun its annual assault on the city. The dust rose from the street in small cyclones, coating everything—the neem leaves, the hibiscus flowers, the clothes hung out to dry. It settled on Malini's *dupatta*, on her eyebrows, in the creases of her neck. She did not bother to brush it away. Her daughter-in-law, Anjali, had asked her earlier that morning: "Ma, why do you sit outside all day? Come inside. The fan is running." Malini had not answered. How could she explain that the dust, too, was watching? That it carried memories—of the old days, of the lane as it used to be, of her husband's cough in the winter months, of the mango tree that once stood where the grocery shop now stood? The dust remembered everything, even when people forgot. A young couple walked past—probably newlyweds, the way they kept their distance from each other, careful not to touch. The girl wore a salwar kameez of pale yellow, already turning grey at the hem. Malini watched them disappear around the corner, and for a moment she was seventy years younger, walking these same streets with her own husband, her hand hidden in the fold of his dhoti. The dust swirled around her feet. She began to count the beads again: one for each year she had lived in this house, one for each Durga Puja, one for each monsoon. Somewhere in the counting, the past and present blurred into a single, continuous thread. When evening came, Anjali called her inside for tea. Malini rose slowly, her knees crackling like old timber, and made her way to the kitchen. The dust on her clothes fell in a thin shower onto the floor, forming small clouds that hung in the slanted sunlight. "Did you see anyone interesting today?" Anjali asked, the way she always did, not really expecting an answer. Malini sipped her tea—it was too sweet, as it always was—and said nothing. But she was thinking of the couple, of the dust on the girl's dupatta, of how the dust knew their story already, before they had even lived it. The dust knew everything. It knew the secret that Malini had kept for fifty-three years. It knew about the child, the one she was never supposed to speak of, the one born to her elder brother's wife in shame and sorrow. It knew about the money that had changed hands in the dark, about the tears that had fallen on a pillow that was later burned. The dust had witnessed all of it, silently, and it had kept the secret as faithfully as Malini had. She set down her cup and looked out the kitchen window at the street below, where the last light of day was turning the dust golden. In the distance, she could hear the calls of the *koels*, the crows, the evening vendors. In the foreground, she could feel the weight of all those years pressing down on her shoulders. Tomorrow, she would sit on the veranda again. The dust would rise from the street, and it would settle on her dupatta, on her eyebrows, in the creases of her neck. And she would sit there, counting her beads, keeping her silence, trusting the dust to do what no living person ever could—to hold the truth without judgment, without pity, without the need to speak it aloud. The dust knew too. And that was enough.
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