Ayushi Singh

Figuring out

Its only when I am sleeping that it stops.
It clicks every morning like an alarm clock, ticking into my head like time, only slower and louder. It’s like the Monday breakfast I don’t have time for but gulp down none-the-less, like the coffee with too much milk, too much sugar that I sweetly smile and drink, even when I know that the caffeine in it has been long dead. It burns through the drapes around mid-day, synthesizing hunger on my skin not for more… for less.
It crawls on my body in the hot-cold shower, my scrubs and soaps only poisoned by its smell. I see it frothing down into the drains but it fogs on my face from the other side of the silvered mirror…

It’s the first drop of sweat on my forehead, always before time, just when I thought the room was getting colder than before.

It’s in the darkness of the growing shadows every evening. It makes me want to jump over it, or shut my eyes and pretend that it’s gone… like childhood. It’s the first breeze that ruffles my untamed hair. It’s in the giggles of the girls on the benches that I walk past towards the dimming moon. They laugh at mismatched colours or the secrets I thought I had hidden well under the bed.

It’s in the extra pinch of salt that had slipped through my thinking fingers; its flavour still lingers after meals and tears. It’s also in the stars that are hiding behind the darkish clouds. I can’t see them but I know they’ll be there… hiding.

It’s in the late night phone calls that never come, or the dreams that I know will haunt me with silent screams.

I may run away from the clicking time, or skip the morning breakfast, or wipe that hot drop of sweat from my life, but before I can gasp for a breath from under the dark waters, it disappears… leaving blank, hollow pages on my face to figure. I don’t know what it is but it is stuck in my tooth like the flesh of aging memories that I don’t, I can’t forget.

It only stops when I think I am sleeping… that’s when it sits next to my pillow, watching and waiting for the next sunrise…