The Shape of a Name
Purnima Anand
photo credit: Pascal Campion
Dear H
It has been almost two years since I last wrote your name—or said it. It feels strange to utter it now. To slowly become aware of how much of you I have come to let go. When a word abandons the body after dwelling in it for years, the mouth refuses to let go of its nauseating aftertaste. It forms over and over on the tongue, trying to claw its way into existence. Three years of loving a person who only understands hate can really twist and turn you up. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and touch different parts of my body trying to remember the shape of your hands. I thought I had it memorized.
When abuse happens, without hands or weapons, it leaves behind bruises that are a little deeper— lacerations that are a little too sharp. It takes the shape of one’s heart and sprawls all over, beating, each thrum like a muffled, suffocated scream for help. It roars, like rain-clouds, at the base of the lungs, refusing to pour, every breath transformed into a warning for disaster. That is all I felt through most of our days together—endlessly awaiting the storm, collecting umbrellas, preparing for a torrential downpour.
At times, your determination to make me hate myself seemed unreal. I felt special every time you invented a new way to put me down. Humiliating me in restaurants; having me chase after you on busy roads, weeping. You always blamed your crueller, harsher sides on your parents. You said your mother once kept a blazing hot steam iron on your leg when you were eight, and that is why you couldn’t distinguish love from hurt. I think the surprises were what kept bringing me back. I was sobbing in the room and you were eating mangoes outside. I was begging you not to leave and you were laughing, rolling another joint.
I am sure we smelled of rot together. Like a plant bought in the hope of making the room feel fuller, less lonely, but goes forgotten, day after day, un-watered. A plant kept in the same spot, for months, until every leaf reduces to a reminder of regret and needs to be gotten rid of.
Every love that ever existed has a language of its own. Glances and grins only the lovers themselves can understand. Long after their love is forgotten, the language remains. It lives on, waiting to be revisited until both of them are dead, or worse, creating a completely new alphabet. Thereafter, it exists in fainter shapes, misty and blotchy, in memories shared with friends and family. Eventually, it stops being spoken of or thought about and becomes completely abandoned.
At this exact moment, the universe has swallowed at least a few million languages as their final native speakers are forgotten. I will make sure I never speak about you or us to anyone, to ensure our language finds its way into oblivion slightly sooner. To make sure ours gets to rest easier.
Purnima is a twenty-three-year-old poet from the town of Ajmer in India. Her work has previously appeared in The Alipore Post and The Bombay Review. The author is writing under a pseudonym.