Author: Aleya Kassam

(a meditation on grief and the things that keep me up at night)

I sat cross-legged on the floor under the dangling naked light bulb; three tests arranged in front of me like obedient children at school assembly. We’d had an argument about how to approach the tests. He’d wanted me to take them one at a time after we knew the results of the one before. I’d wanted to take all three at a go.Now he was in the bedroom, sulking, pacing. And I was in the bathroom counting the cracked tiles on the wall, the minutes stretched out like sickly sweet goody goodies pulled between sticky fingers (before we grew up…

This is how it ends. Me wanting to peel back his eyelids, crawl into his eyes, wriggle through the membrane and swim my way through his pupils to get at her. Have you ever looked at someone and seen yourself in their eyes? Have you? Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and seen the you that you used to be? Have you? I have. There, with the smell of fat drizzling through hot grills onto blistering charcoal. There, with the sound of lamb chops sizzling in the milky darkness atop the jiko. There, with the taste of acid on my tongue…

As we sit caged in the tuk tuk, stopped in traffic, I can’t stop watching them. He stares straight ahead, completely unflustered as she runs her palm down his denim covered thigh. It isn’t a tentative graze of fingertips, but a possessive stroke, as if she knows this part of his body well. The rhythm. The pressure. The pace. Knows it intimately. His expression doesn’t change, as she squeezes his waist with her other hand. An urging.  Then she peels her body back from his and nuzzles against him, trying to kiss his neck. I wonder what he smells like.…

You can tell a lot about a man by borrowing his car. Driving his stick. Revving his transmission. Ahem. His Package You don’t even need to open the door, to get the first taster. Is the car knocked about, scrapes, dents, a side mirror dangling by electrical tape? If his car is completely banged up, be wary. This is potentially a man with an aggressive nature who doesn’t give a shit; the sort of man who dives into his meat before washing his hands, chucking bones on the table, and sucking marrow through the gap between his teeth, loudly capped…