#aurapeace

A few months ago, that I realised I was turning into my father. I found myself muttering passages from books to no one, disappearing for hours, away from my room, and stopped taking my medication. There were cigarette holes in my sheets— but to be fair, that wasn’t me. It was him, the boy who burnt my sheet. We were sitting on my bed, and he was examining the burn mark he’d just made on my white hotel room sheet, while a track played in the background in low fidelity. He apologized, and I all I had to say was eh. We then sat leaning against the wall, our arms awkwardly fitting into the other’s—  mine pudgy, his bony. Cigarette in my hand, I turned towards him, as he picked a strand of hair from behind my ear and let it fall over my eye. I tried to kiss his shoulder every few breaths, and we abandoned the cigarette in moments, taking a second to put the ashtray on the floor— a cheap blue and white chopstick holder I’d bought earlier that summer. Kissing.

I know with certainty when it all changed. The Tuesday after I gave up my prescription, I cut my hair, and Wednesday, I found that the boy wouldn’t fuck me. We were watching a movie, his head in my lap, and he sat up to shut the screen. I ran my hands through his hair. I always found my hands running through his hair, or tracing his neck, his shoulder. Always, when we were alone. He mirrored my action, but then pulled away. We hadn’t spoken about it, the fact that I’d cut off more than a foot’s length of my hair. I leaned in again, but he got up hurriedly. I must get going, he said, while gathering his belongings— I was used to him leaving abruptly, as he pleased, making nothing between us ever feel enough. Just enough for the people who loved me to notice. I didn't say anything. I never did. I was kneeling on my bed, and I tried to hug him goodbye, but it felt more like we were shrugging in unison. And then, he left. Surprise! He didn’t touch me after that Wednesday night, and it wasn’t hard to notice— an arm’s distance while we were seated, the way his fingers withdrew even before he took the lighter from my hand, no playing with my hair. We weren’t ones for public display of affection. After all, we were only hooking up— our relationship was private, only for our viewing, and even then, it wasn’t hard to notice.

I was already mourning my hair— the result of a nervous breakdown. I was seeking novelty, or perhaps to shred something, be snakelike, and he wasn’t helping. I then used his lack of attraction to make myself feel better about having lost my hair, telling myself that I didn’t exist to please him. But the truth was that I regretted cutting my hair the moment the scissors first whirred schhr- schhr— black blurs falling to the ground, tears in my eyes. It felt like watching myself get murdered. Liberating, yes, but a gross violation against the self nonetheless.

***

I was sent home a few weeks after that Wednesday, owing to a persistent fever, that the clinic decided was way out of their league. My grandmother was convinced no one would marry me if I kept my hair short, as if my hair mattered more than my health. My father, who hadn’t noticed until she had commented, complimented me, and in defence said that the length suited me. That week at home, I used whatever little energy I had to speak to my father, a man I hadn’t had a real conversation with in years. We spoke in long spells of silence, our love for books filling the conversation. I had inherited a lot from the paternal unit, and I was more convinced than ever that I’d wake up one day, suddenly have lost all marking features of my mother.

My friends were too busy to meet, I was too weak to go outdoors, and the world had an orange tinge to it. It felt like sunset at all times of the day— there was a sense of an ending, and I wasn’t dying. My fever broke every night, and I would writhe in cold, tire out, and wake up each morning, my fever back. It was horrid to say the least, and in the few days that I had been home, I cried every night, as three blankets weighed down against me, trying to protect me. All I did each day was reread books from my childhood library, eat khichdi, and lie in bed. I was useless. The world had no room for girls who didn't read more. It had no space for the quiet ones, the depressed, the ones with no energy, and the fever had made me that girl.

I lay in bed, and I obsessed. My attention amplified on everything that was lacking— the boy. In my state, his eyes would haunt me, shiny with a tinge of red, like a rabbit’s. I couldn’t tell if he was a hunter or a kit, for sometimes he looked at me like I was his most precious, and other times, like I was going to die. Soon enough, I’d exhausted what I knew was a conversation I should have been having with him. On one day that I felt particularly well, I went through memorabilia, that a few years ago I had sorted, labelled and stored in a cupboard; the result of a childhood hope, that I would grow to be famous, and that it would all be worth something. A museum of me. Exhibit A: A letter I had written to him when we’d first met. Only a few months before, I’d told him a on a particularly difficult afternoon where to find it if I were to die. Slowly, it didn’t matter that I had slept with him on this very bed at home the summer before. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to fuck me now. It didn’t matter that he was so far away. I let my general state of apathy take his shape and let it spoon me to bed.

Soon, I stopped obsessing over him.

My fever was gone, and the doctor cleared me to go back to college. I was still weak, but I could go back to being some other girl. A girl other than who the fever had made me. I washed my hair for the first time in weeks, appreciating the ease that new length brought with it. Going back to college felt like walking into the sunset— where I was headed to, I didn’t know. Would this space accept me, after being away for so long? I didn’t know. Would I be invisible to him? I didn’t know. I didn’t meet him for a week after my return, I didn’t even try. I was desperately trying to piece my life back together, to a semblance of what it was before the fever.

Before I had stopped my medication.

Before I realized I was turning into my father.

Before I chopped off my hair.

***

We sat on my bed, white sheet with a burn hole. He was examining it as if he were seeing it for the first time. His head in my lap, me stroking his hair. It was evening, and we both agreed we could do with a cigarette. We sat, leaning against the wall, shoulders touching, both bony now. It didn’t feel like sunset anymore, and the orange had faded, giving way to early smog season.

We fucked.

I came.

He didn’t.

I asked him if he’d fuck me if I shaved my head. He asked if I’d fuck him if he shaved his head. I didn’t tell him that when I was seven, a stranger on a street, bald man on the street felt me up. I don’t think I ever could tell anyone. He got up to leave. I grabbed his hand.

He stayed to watch as I shaved a patch off, not knowing where, what, why. It fell on my white sheet, making a noise that I am certain only I heard. He walked out, and my head felt cold, and I began to cry, scream, but without noise. I felt something wet under where my frontal lobe was, and touched my scalp— a razor cut.

Wait.

I opened my drawer and took out a razor.

Are you crazy?

I dropped the blade to the ground, my head hit the mattress, and I lay, half kneeling, as I tried to dust the hair off. Wisps falling, clumps stuck to my hand. I fell asleep like that, on the white sheet with a cigarette hole. Now bloody too.