Narrative, by Aadya Agarwal
.
At first glance
A shell folds into itself
It awaits, vacant at its core,
For someone who had lived there once before
A self that had occupied
The shell that now sits
Vacant
.
I got home tired. The key found its way into the door, struggled to let me through. But I had walked into a wasteland; my empty shell. The bed was missing any sheets, as though they had melted off onto the floor. It cradled a coverless pillow and a colourful blanket. Soon my back was curved along the dent my form had so diligently carved into the mattress. My mind was far from empty. It was overflowing like an ocean that had bled into a house just by the shore; it was churning with salty reflections of the day that had cooled to witness a silent night sky.
The ocean outside seemed to be dull and opaque, reflecting nearly nothing. The moon was dark and distant, and yet somehow the waters ran up towards the mainland. Eleven days had passed since I saw you last. And I’ve lost count of days since I first wrote you out, an exile from my soul. Fleeting visions of you now resounded in this skull of mine, like the machine-gun rain on my tin roof. Restless was my heart, resisting every part of your speech – how you had held me in your arms and told me life is too short to stay in one place. You said we’d be gone for decades before this planet collapses in itself, before the waters rise in revolution against the earth. You said our lips were turning the wrong way. You said our hair was thick. Like, really fucking thick. Blinking, I ran my fingers through the thick dust-cloud scattered about me. A few black lines I pulled out, with far too much ease. Your words then felt more hollow than this almost empty home.
Had I really wished you gone? I could move not one part of me. Yet my hand reached for the pen and paper on the night stand.
..
At first glance
Placed upon your palm,
A shell is dirt arranged around itself
Dirt more sturdy than your skin
Dirt that waves had chased out of the ocean
That is what you read in its smell, at least,
A refugee
Salt and sand
A home it had, now vacant land
.
Near a town that reeks of perishable promise, an anchor is let down. With every turn of its metal harness, the ocean floor draws nearer. Water empties out to allow this foreign occupant. Fish simply swim around the chain, and none can budge the hunk of metal planted so ruthlessly in the seabed. The ship stays there; of course, it has no way to leave the shore. It gently bobs, for nothing stopped the waves before. It wanders no more. That’s the marvellous thing about heavy objects; they only move for forces equal to or greater than their own weight, for gravity, it does to all the same. What is this wool, this blanket that now binds me to my bed? It came from sheep of leaden fleece, I
know. It lines not just this blanket, but these rusting rings around my eyes; heavy they are and all I do is live through waking dreams.
..
On further inspection
Now held against a brilliant sun
An erstwhile home reveals itself
.
A creature much smaller than you once occupied this space. It snuck around corners of the seabed. A million of her kind, brilliant and bright, migrated, rock to reef. They fought for their lives against predators. She escaped twelve such foes, lived to survive twelve more, until the last one had her. Only after that did you find this empty home, lying on the beach. The ocean had no need for it.
Turn
I stir in my wakefulness. I haven’t yet learnt to roll with the waves. And you… The deeper your search stretches into the blue, the unrecognizable becomes rich with meaning. The more you research, the more you feel the urge to pour all your recent learning onto a piece of paper. You’re never satisfied, not even after every last sheet in your possession is drenched. I’m a writer. Not in the way I make my earning, perhaps that sail will never glide, but through it I indulge this yearning. It feels intense. It makes me ill to think without it sometimes. Sometimes it has a hold on me. Sometimes I flourish by flourishing my sadness with words that sound like water strung together, fill up this empty cup in my chest. And then I have relief. Sometimes my hands move without me. I’m a writer. Someone who smokes is a smoker. Smoke like what relieves our stress, darkness that evolved from our needs and our wants, leaks into the ocean. It turns the immense salinity to an acid few creatures can survive. My lungs are heavy, thick with ink. I shrink in size each time I think of letters I might leave behind. Who knows what you might read into them?
You love to leave me notes. I find them after drunken nights, plastered on the walls, pastures of kind words, and I feel closer to you. They remind me of mother’s eyes, helping me forgive the tears in mine. Could any embrace be sweeter than these pages clasped between my fingers? Am I a shell of who I used to be? I feel my youth flounder, although I hear it’s still around. Was I ever really someone else? Perhaps never as other as you seem. I wrote before, incessantly, unable to admit the sound of pen on paper was only that. Unable to un-tell myself that ink bottles are oceans. Unable to unblacken my fingers. Unable to unsee the sea in my room. Unable to notice that I was able, but for a push. I am the shell, cold and hardened. I’m quiet, too proud. Patterns akin to skin cover me whole, but all as proof that I am older. I’m blind without your sight, stagnant without your locomotion, soft creature who lived here. You are the self that moves us, but not for eleven days. I ask again, do I really wish you gone? For how could I see without our sight or move without our locomotion?
..
You put down the piece
of what was once marine life
someone else’s claim
then lies upon it
.
On this particularly sun scorched beach, a tiny hermit crab wanders close. You watch, curious like the crab, as he settles down near that shell. What is he waiting for? Another one saunters by, this one slightly bigger, and plonks itself between them. With time, more and more collect, lining up behind the shell. As if a peculiarly prejudiced banker had asked of them to stand in order of their sizes. The largest one, on its arrival, decides to leave behind its home to shift into a new one; the one you placed back on the beach. As it does so, the crab behind her moves into the freshly vacated shell. One by one, this gradual transfer ends in new residents for nearly all. Only the tiniest of them is now silently shining in the sunlight. It is the shell that wandered in upon the first almost miniature hermit crab. This ritual, a dance decided by nature, is what you imagine keeps
the crabs encased, protected as they grow. What keeps shells alive, too, long after their first occupant is gone.
It’s possible a child chances upon the smallest one. It would end up glued to a card for her mother’s sister, the lady dressed in peach who brought her to the beach for a day out in the sun. Then it would live on a fridge in some suburban house. No matter how childish I may dismiss you as; this is what I’d want if I were you. I often imagine being you once more.
..
On further inspection
Now dancing between your fingers
A turning tunnel reveals itself;
A passage
.
Walking through it, you can hear the ocean. You almost feel the waters washing past your skin as they echo along the pearly white walls. Deeper as you travel, the walls come closer to your feet, and closer to your hands, and closer to your ears. The outside has long since receded, as would the sea at low tide. And though the light behind us fades, warm light from the sun illuminates intricate patterns outside the cave. With all of its majesty, its floor carefully curves into walls, which perfectly resembles how they meet its ceiling; it feels like walking through a vessel. A solitary cell we are, a singular pilgrim, acknowledging the vastness of the world around us. Each sound secreting from our mouth floods the halls of this vast structure. Back and forth it hits, and we
sway along to it, my voice melting into the ocean’s. And when I make the final parikrama, the revolutions of my past become louder. Every city I lost, every battle I fought, every year I left in my tracks, forgot, are with me at the end of this whorl.
…
The Ocean outside is gleaming now, bright and glad once more.
