I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 27

MAYBE IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND: MY HEART POSSESSES ME, I'M BUT A VESSEL

            This is my walk of shame.

Dal must have carried me upstairs because I woke up in bed. Still in yesterday's clothes and with pain echoing from my head to my feet, every muscle seized up to the point of immobility. I wanted nothing more than to bury myself into the mattress and never rise, but a glance at my phone informed me I'd slept around the clock and I knew the longer I stay, the more embarrassing it'll be.

But I've deteriorated onto the second-last stair like a wind-up toy run out of energy, unable to continue until someone comes along and twists the blades in my spine.

Whispers drift from the dining table. They're waiting for me. The urge to throw open the front door and run until my ankles twist and my lungs cleave in half overwhelms me, but when I finally move, it's to drag my feet through the living room.

Baba and Miles lift their heads to me in unison, cutting off their hushed conversation. Stillness shrouds the room, not the silence of a funeral prayer, rather the morning after New Year's or a wedding when a few people have partied through the night and now have to wait for taxis to pick them up before they finally get to crash into bed.

My voice interrupts it, nails on a chalkboard. 'Where's Dal?' I didn't intend it to come out so accusatory.

Baba lifts an exhausted hand to gesture through the back door. 'He's outside with your mother.'

Through the window, I find them on our rusting garden chairs backdropped by overgrown rhododendrons. Each holds a mug of tea in sealed fingers that look like they might crumble to dust if someone were to remove the cups. The tea has been forgotten overnight.

As I watch, Dal says something which evokes a tired laugh from Iya as if they're old friends who moved to different continents in the formative years of their careers and have now been reunited in retirement without a slight dent in their bond.

'They've talked all night,' Miles says, voice hoarse. I don't dare to meet his eye but he reads my question nonetheless and inclines his head in a lazy version of a shrug to answer that he doesn't know what about.

Baba stands up. 'You need breakfast.'

He ushers me to sit and collects a large plate of shakshuka and avocado salad, three pieces of bread wedged to the edge. Then, like a dessert that'll motivate me through the main course, my meds. He stays behind me as I eat, alternating between rubbing the top of my spine and caressing my head to help me keep it down.

Once half an egg is all that's left, Baba squeezes my shoulder and pulls back. 'I'm going to tell them you're awake.' It's a guise to leave me and Miles alone. I hear his voice in my mind add to give you privacy.

But when the door shuts behind Baba, I opt to pretend Miles isn't there. Slice my egg into pieces, then even smaller ones. Don't eat any of them.

I should give him more credit. He's still here. That means something when he could've run down the street, screaming for help. He doesn't, nor does he concede to fetishize my disorders, to make me the broken muse of hundreds of baroque paintings to feed colonial voyeurists. Meeting all of me has changed nothing except saturate him with compassion, and that is a million times more terrifying than disgust. I have no survival kit for this.

He must sense my discomfort. 'I hope it's okay I'm here... Your parents said I could stay.'

The morning roughness in his voice scratches an itch in the back of my mind I only become aware of as it subsides, the relief so intense my eyes roll into my head. Has it been there all my life? And what am I supposed to do now that I'm aware of it? Wake up to discomfort for the rest of my mornings and pray I might hear him speak at least once?