I want to be seen. 

 

Craning my neck out of the window, tilted head and shining eyes, searching the wisps of clouds for a glimpse of the stars. Out here, where the light pollution makes the sky glow a dull purple, a faraway floodlight prowls, sending beams out into a night of cricket songs. 

 

Climbing up four flights of stairs, chest heaving, desperate breath of air. When the morning is holding onto cotton-candy clouds as the sun peeks out, melting them to the sky-blue warmth of a summer day. 

 

I want to be seen. Seen for what I can show to the world. Pretty eyes, almond eyes, apples on my cheeks, dusted pink perhaps, a dimple on the side of my mouth and absolutely no smile lines. Nose like Asterix's Cleopatra: small, triangular, vaguely samosa-like, with the sharpness of a dorito. 

 

When I feel eyes on me, I look away, too aware, anticipating.  

 

𓇢𓆸

 

Supper is a conversation with fleeting smiles that butter the cold softness of a murmured “No, you go ahead," and await the inevitable “Thank you.” 

 

One night, maybe the first night that I went to inspect the notoriously questionable food upstairs at my hostel, a Pretty Girl called me pretty to my face. Her voice cut through her own energetic conversation about a college playboy, putting away the heavy steel lid of the rice, to say “I know this is random but….”

 

I took the compliment with a ladle full of salty potato kofta, a smile and a thank you, and the sun that somehow rose at 7:47 p.m. that night. 

 

And how could I tell her that it made me feel seen? 

 

Me, the version with messy, uncombed hair, pyjamas, and that shirt that doesn't hug my torso right, and pretty. 

 

I swore it had made my day, that it would make my week, and it tried to. At least until the sight of my too-round belly during some Thursday evening shower broke through the warm glaze of that word, ‘pretty’, an encounter that I was convinced might have been entirely hallucinated. 

 

𓇢𓆸

 

Beauty remains a foggy mirror. 

 

This story starts twelve years ago in a convent school, where the sight of a boy is rare, and to me, uninteresting. 

 

Eleven years ago, I stared out of the window while my parents bought ice cream, thinking the only person who could be my boyfriend was the boy version of me. 

 

Ten years ago, on the first day of school, when P, eleven years old like me, eyed the fine hair on my legs with a coldness I cannot forget. 

 

Nine years ago, watching as my peers discovered homosexuality and tried swirling their tongues around one and a half syllables of the word ‘lesbian’, leering at the sight of me and my girl-best-friend. 

 

Eight years ago, looking away from T because I began liking her more than I knew was possible. 

 

Seven years ago, sitting cross-legged over a marble bench with winter sunlight pouring over my body that felt too heavy after a health check-up, elation shattered at the grand reveal of a 20 cm waistline to be the measuring tape held the wrong way. 

 

Six years ago, gulping lemon water before school, lathering aloe vera and possibly expired salicylic acid foaming face wash everywhere, peeling away slivers of skin healing over an angry red patch between my eyebrows. 

 

Five years ago, looking at a girl, with acne scars and curly hair, a wiry frame, owl-like glasses perched over her nose, and a raspy voice. 

 

Five years ago, Meher. 

 

The day she put a finger against her smiling lips and held my eyes. The way that the smell of freshly cut grass, the sun warm on my sweater, the golden curve of a perfectly crispy bhatura, all chipped away until the world was just me and her. My eyes, her smile, and the world slowing down, no, my world slowing down. 

 

Five years ago, when each letter of her name felt like one extra kilogram of weight crushing me down. Because I had a crush on her and so I was afraid to say her name, even whisper into a telephone, afraid she would hear me. 

 

The thought of her made me think of the colour pink. Her in the sun, her perched on my table, her drinking water from my bottle, her mouth closing around the syllables of my name. 

​

Crush. That word felt apt. 

 

Five years ago, when I couldn't imagine writing any of these words out. 

 

Five years ago: Meher Catching A Falling Flower Amidst Of A Storm, circa 2019. Medium: Memory, caught from the window of a school bus.

 

I remember her, a knot at the back of her head. I remember her arm, outstretched, the white school shirt crisp and billowing around her willowy form. I remember the falling flower, maybe pink, or magenta, or fuschia. I remember the storm, the dust and rain and a breath of cold wind amid a heat wave. 

 

I remember what I saw. I can see it, I can see me as I see Meher. Maybe what I remember is Me Catching A Moment That Only She Has Ever Seen, circa 2019. 

 

Five years ago, love. 

 

Five years ago, love? 

 

I want to be seen. I want to be seen the way I see her, like ripples of sunlight on a footpath, secretly. I want to throw my hands about, float into conversations, and laugh. 

 

I want to love in me what I love in her. 

 

I want to be seen. 

 

Is that what love is? 

 

𓇢𓆸

 

The biggest secret I’ve ever wanted to keep is that I’ve felt things. That I feel things. That I sometimes think of things so much that I make them feel real and think again so much that my truth shatters into tiny little lies. 

 

My hypotheses are satellites that orbit around the self I have built myself up to be. I am a work in progress. I want to become more than I am. I want to be three different people at three different moments and surprise everyone with a fourth. 

 

I crave things and imagine myself having them, I crave things and win things, and sit with a flavor of thick emptiness like lead under my tongue, wishing my disappointment tasted bitter or sour, or like something I could describe. 

 

I want to put words to my desire for things, moments, people, and say their names to myself. I want to love someone and not want to hide, forget, deny. 

 

I built Love up to an ideal so high that it grew taller than me, grew up wobbly and left the satellites in my orbits blinking in confusion. Love grew so tall that it touched the sun and basked in its warmth. When Love fell apart, in that same wibbly-wobbly silently unexpected way, I didn’t realize until the rubble gathered over the blinking satellites that finally let their eyes fall shut. 

 

I don't want to keep this a secret.

 

𓇢𓆸

 

A Note To Self

The ideal of love and the ideal of self, two shattered mirrors facing each other, infinite images, bad luck x1000. 

The things I love about being a person are:

• Being a mirror

• Being a wishing well

• Being a concept

• Being omnipresent 

The things I hate about being a person are: 

• Remembering

• Wanting to make sense

• Standing witness to myself

 

𓇢𓆸

The biggest secret I've kept is that I'm still keeping it. That things take a long time to die inside of me. My heart beats at a snail's pace, my brain juices swirl with meaning I found ages ago, a thesaurus unaware of the meteors scheduled to crash in five business days. 

 

I keep secrets so I find someone to tell them to. I soliloquize subconsciously in silence. 

 

Love is a heavy burden.  

 

Anger is even heavier.  

 

The secret that is the mother of all these secrets is yet another, heavier, uncomfortable weight. It announces itself like a surprise. On a sunny bus ride with the usual afternoon crowd, aching feet and sweat on sunny yellow plastic bus handles.  On almost-summer nights when I try to type out an essay about keeping secrets, knowing I want to spill my secrets. 

 

That I want to be seen. That everything I do is meant for someone's eyes.

 

That I am a performance. That my performance of myself for somebody, nobody, everybody's eyes is a performance for me. 

 

That I want to be seen and that I want to be beautiful. 

 

I keep this secret the way a fisherman casts out a line. I keep this secret the way a kitchen offers warmth. I keep this secret the way the stars draw themselves up into constellations. 

 

I have a secret and I want you to hold it in your hands for a moment.  

​

I'm keeping a secret and I want you to see me keep it. 

 

𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸𓇢𓆸