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outside, the cars come and go. they stop and start, red and green, like magic, like clockwork (science is magic, magic is relative).
'come back to the table, a,' she said.
'should i?'
she was silent. afraid of my mother, as always.

*

'-so I said to him, don't touch it, it's loaded!'
laughter. the sort that ripples across a table, when you can tell in the higher notes that at least one person, like you, didn't think that was particularly funny.
'its wonderful, out there,' p continued. 'you can feel the sun in your bones - not on your skin. deeper, as if it's worked its way across clear air and inside of you.'
y smiled at him, shyly, while d gazed wide-eyed.
the clink and clatter of cutlery, steel on china; clear, thin glass against wood (the muffled thud, as wood, once living, gives, just a little). and polished spoons on polished lips - that cacophony of eating.
such is punctuation, at a dinner table.
in one ear, i hear the birds singing (to calm us down).
(not real, not real, i have to keep reminding myself. focus on the sounds.)
someone's talking about buying a house. it's time, they say . . to build something, to keep something. for some reason, i think of nathia.
l touches my fingers, under the table. i come back to them.
'has anyone had any strange dreams, lately?' i ask.
p smiles, y looks nervous and d turns away from p.
'i had one, last night,' she says.
my eyes, and a vaguely motioned knife, say 'well?'
'i was running,' she said, 'across an open field, when suddenly i noticed that there were no flowers - only dying buds. i had to keep running, because someone was right behind me, chasing me.'
p looked at her hair, caught.
'i kept running, but i kept worrying about the flowers,' she said. 'so eventually i stopped. i turned around, and there was no-one there. i picked up a dead bud . . . and it turned green, and begun to flower, right in my hand.'
her eyes always opened wider, at this part.
'but then i felt something digging into my skin at my wrist, where my palm begins. the flower was growing into me. inside of me! i could feel myself getting weaker, feel the blood flowing out of me, and into its leaves. the last thing i remember,' she finished, 'was lying in an open field, under a tree.'
as her last syllables hung in the air, she looked happy with herself. that was always d's way, i suppose.
p brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes, and touched d's wrist.
'was it right here?' he asked.
and now d was caught. so it goes.

when i left, p had just begun to tell a story about finding truth on his travels. i mumbled something about needing to check on the dessert (even as a child, i was always plotting escapes. a favourite was glancing at one's watch, and then feigning surprise, as if you've just remembered something. as a ten year old, i think that one amused them - either way, i was gone).
y, i remember thinking, always chooses so unwisely.

*
at night, i stare at cars. it helps me sleep, in cities without seas. that night, i sat down, to write.
"i'll always remember april, because of the tendrils of grass, the sun, and the tree.
when i was young, i would run. sometimes from imaginary friends, other times from imagined fears. i still do, of course. that April night, it had been fear.
across yellowed grass, dying from heat - too exhausted, it seemed, to live.
eventually, my legs slowed (as they always do). i felt as if i was running through thick air, as if all the weight i could imagine was in my hands, my feet, my fingers, my head, my heart - i couldn't run. i had to run.
after my fears consumed me, i lay in the yellow grass. i picked at a dead flower, watching as its petals dried up at my touch, as it turned to dust.
instead, its petals twisted, slowly; pink, and then a deep red. i felt its tendrils, caressing my wrists (and i thought of l). i felt its roots touch my veins, and i cried out (as i do, with l).
the last thing i remember was lying in an open field, under a tree."

*

i turned to watch l's silhouette in the doorway, and followed her soon after. 

the cars come and go.

- animals, or, glass against wood -

dear a,

the sun shone through white petals, this morning, and i remembered september - by the gardens, in her baking heat. that was the afternoon that i had screamed at you, while you walked away. home, you had said. 'i want to go home.' i have to go home.
as you left, my fingers reached for my silver pendant. i rubbed it, softly, to the sound of the door slamming. that was, i think, when we first broke (like glass, shattering, like waterfalls, like blood) - between footsteps and fingers.
(it's raining here, now. the raindrops are making patterns on my window, and my fingers tell me i've seen something.)

(it is one in the morning, the day has not ended. by two i am scared. sleep will not come.)
such a strange thing, love is. i wonder that i don't go mad, some mornings, and that i don't stay sane on others.
grey skies remind me of karachi's misty mornings. orange neon reminds me of drives by the beach (without you). red brick reminds me of parting, and rain of making love to you.
this morning, still asleep, my fingers touched the hollow of my throat - looking for dull silver.

it's been long enough, i think. i think that i'd like to see you, a. i wonder if you still live by the lake.

always,

l

- between footsteps and fingers -

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i first saw her in the summer, when she was still warm. between baking skin and the scent of red earth, we explored one another. she let me touch her in unexpected places, and i let her wash over me - we were both, of course, searching for home.
summer was the smell of water cascading over parched dust in a red brick driveway, the gentle crackle of leaves (something is always dying, in a city) as someone passed my window. (Keep walking past the open windows, irving wrote. and Sorrow floats.)
it was walking by canals, touching the tops of the weeds with the palms of one's hands. summer was when we were happiest, dreaming of clouds and better days, of fitnaa, in the red city.
the winds gradually quickened, and the rain came, and went. our autumn was learning people's names, strange dialects, and imagining new ends.
by winter's end, we no longer spoke as often, or as quietly. even so, winter was when we were warmest, to one another - when we leaned.
i left her, in the end, of course. lahore was a beautiful city, but she was never mine.

*

breaking hearts, she thought, quietly to herself, is what i do.
she used to write stories, about people, about cities, about herself. she told them, but only to herself, or when no-one else was listening. they were fiction, but they were not.
we loved each other, but we did not.
we could have loved eac-

i broke his heart, she began again.

- i wonder what you'll say about me, they said -

- scars in the country, the summer and her -

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dear l,

things were simpler then, when we loved like children do . . . claiming possession over each other's fingers and toes, blinking in wide-eyed wonder at smiles, sentences and scents.
somewhere in between your fingers and scent, i think, is where home lies. but where does the thinking end, l? when do we stop thinking about living? because between the imagining and the running, it's no wonder that i wake tired and sleep restless, that i chase nightmares and live dreams.
i don't know how long this can go on. i don't know how long we can keep from living.

love,

a.

a,

we were children, then. never innocent, never quite so guilty, as you once said (so wrapped up in your words, love, that i need to travel your pages to make it through).
i don't want to imagine forever. soon, i will be gone, perhaps. you understand, i think. i think.

love, always, and remember september.

l.


- mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. in fact, it's cold as hell. -

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dear l,

i wonder how it is that you are, out there between dignitaries, dissertations and dilemmas, somewhere between the sun and the sky.
it has been months since you wrote, and my fingers find that they miss your syllables as much as your skin. do they treat you well, where you are? how's the weather? are you happy?
i wonder about your happiness, in idle moments, between cigarettes, cups of chai, and stories.
then again, i don't suppose i get to ask these questions. it must have been a terrible wrong. was it in geneva?
france. no, it was france. you keep reminding me . . geneva was where we made love by the lake, and it was in france that i broke.
these details escape me . . you were always so good at keeping me together.
i find that i think of you often, even now, years later - waiting for trains, watching lovers by the green, in the smell of crisp mornings, in between nightmares. you'd think my skin would have grown accustomed to your absence by now - it has, of course, been so many years since we touched. somehow, each year rolls by, and i keep seeing you . . your fingers handing me change at the drugstore, in a busker's smile, in a stranger's lips. i wonder why it is that you haven't left, yet . . then again, i wonder what it is that i'd do, if i stopped seeing you, even if it sometimes leaves me empty, in the morning.
i saw a woman die, last night. her lips were flecked with blood, and a man in a shirt stained scarlet kept thumping at where her heart used to beat. i saw her head turn, as the life drained out of her. little droplets of blood fell from her lips, as she tried to squeeze one last breath out of this life. he was crying, by then, and she was staring straight into my eyes.
and then she was gone.
i woke up screaming, again, missing your smell.
i don't suppose that these letters, from your past, do you any good. then again, i can't see what harm they could do, either. you are elsewhere, somewhere, and i don't think you'll hold it against me to try and rid myself of blood-soaked nightmares, of death, and of this terrible fiction that becomes my reality.
hospitals are terrible places to say goodbye. that, i suppose, is also why i keep writing.

love,

a.

- death is the road to awe -

l,

there was a time when i wanted to die in a lake in geneva, just you, i and the rain, softly on our skin, somewhere by the lake.
do you remember geneva? it was late in the summer, when we went. the air was turning crisp, and you could smell autumn, waiting in the leaves.
you looked beautiful, in the afternoon by the lake; right after we made love, and just before we fought. that is how i will always remember you.
i just wanted to know if you remembered geneva.

-a

a,

you called me to a cafe, and told me to come away with you. i was - we were - younger then, of course. i was enraptured by your fingers, and your fiction. you told me to come closer, as if you were going to tell me a secret. just as i leaned in to your ear, awaiting a whisper, you kissed me.
that is how i will always remember you.

the lake was in france, darling. we went to geneva in the spring; you spent three days locked in the room, smoking incessantly, staring moodily out the window and occasionally writing something, which you refused to show me.

-l

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el, like all cities, is a city of memories. it comes back to me, in flashes- on the bus, out the window, a doorway, a hospital, a footpath. as if i have lived a life before, here- with a family, my own hopes, dreams, and you.
she is everything familiar, wrapped around my eyes so that i do not know when i am. whether this is all happening here, now, or whether i am merely reliving a life.
did we love each other, el and i? i seem to remember something about warmth, and always; but then i turn the corner, and the streets are altogether unfamiliar. no, i had not been there before . . . it must have been some other park, another face, some other street, a different market altogether.

every moment of confusion, of course, loosens the hold of her, el's, memories on me, and suddenly it seems as if it may well have been fiction after all. and yet i wonder, if there was a life, once, and i think that i would not have minded it, so.

- if you see her, say hello -

they left each other notes, in the strangest of places. 
'i'll be late,' on the front door.
'your mother needs you,' in between pages.
'don't leave without breakfast,' by the bedside.

ultimately, it was a sort of conversation, between absences and miles.

he remembered the first time he left her at the airport. as they kissed in the car, he felt his skin burn for her; and then, briefly, relief.
on the way home, that early morning, he had stopped by a roadside stall, to pick up some cigarettes. he felt vaguely guilty, as he saw the edge glow orange while the trees passed by.
she hated the smoke. so, for that matter, did he.
as the door clicked shut, he felt the dust on his fingertips. and as the warm water flowed onto his skin, his hands, his hair, he caught a glimpse of the mirror.
'miss me,' it said, in faint outlines, on the fogged glass. 

he was glad when she returned. he didn't like to be left alone with himself, for too long.

somewhere, behind the last bag of sugar in the kitchen, is a piece of yellowing, now parched, notebook paper.
'i will leave you,' it says.

- write to me -