Kind

It’s been a while since I’ve talked to the clown with the framed degree. I can feel the same tremors roar their way home again. The volcano smirks and I can’t keep it down anymore; it bubbles in my pulse with a red froth. Dad has taken the blue road again; I can see him walking with his hands in his pockets. Away. Where the daughters are sane and the wives don’t die. Youth lies on the marble floor like wooden ringlets of fresh furniture. Silent. I haven’t eaten for days; I can taste my own rotting stench. Stranded. Grey days with red nights. The days stay small and mostly numb. I don’t mind them. But the nights are big and parade from my nails, drilling slits in the green branches of my hands. So now they give me sleeping pills. Two blue eyes in the palm of my hand. The pills have a purpose, the pills function well. Thesis-The pills are far more alive than me. The doctor had asked me what I thought my disorder was, I had said I was a fish afraid of water. I hold pieces of myself in my hands like a newborn, trying to make some sense of them. But the picture never unfurls and my patience is overcome by melancholy. So I will write my own diagnosis and hang it on my forehead, I will hammer the stars every night for the world to see. But that is all tomorrow. If only the night is kind to me.

Mehar Haleem is a seventeen year old student who writes for the editorial board of her school. She has previously won several creative writing competitions and her works are going to be published in the forthcoming issues of Sprout and Inklette. She currently live sin New Delhi, India.