It starts with the grass

It started with the grass. Long, dancing, more laughter and scratchy kisses than this maze of murder

many would imagine it to become. It was two months ago, and we had to get it cut short to the crewcut

of a boy going off to war, you see the Delhites were coming home after a long long time. Tinder and

dirt, it waited for the ending monsoon rains. The final tears of mourning are always the most plentiful, it

is the last time you will whimper their name in pillow-clutching nights.

It turned into the open doors. The AC was too cold and the night decided to free its dank prisoners, the

autumn chill claiming these mottling cells as sunrise grew closer and closer to night each day, and night

hid their shy love from view. One should always leave doors the way they found them; How naive I was

to think that only held true for the forests and fae. 

There is something primal about the shrubs outside your veranda door rustling and speaking in the

night. You send unknown senses searching for intruders, and yet having found none, you try to return.

Sleep is fleeting and fear has made a home in your quieting breath.

Ants make their way as crumbs circle the bedstead, the cool dawn air lulling me into forgetful sleep as the

door stays an open invitation to the world beyond the locked screen door. I began losing bits of myself

faster than I ever did. A few strands of hair on my beanbag from the debates the day before. A few from

improv last night as nails scraped follicles and I was a doctor repairing a human heart. Bits and pieces

of my premature age and histories, becoming entangled with fur and dust and invited dirt. Panic seized

and played in the shower, I kept running my hands through my hair, get them all out! Get all the suckers

that will fall, inevitably, out! Strands, memories, entire midnight processions of lectures and burning oil,

out, out, out!!!!

They reach down to my forehead now, tickling, scratching. Dirt has woven itself into the pillow covers,

and the ants are not bedfellows, having graduated from the slipper class of yesterweek. Skin trembles

and itches with their phantom quests across this duvet dreamscape. The screen door looks so

tempting...

Step out. Join us. It is twilight, you know you want to. Resist all you can, we know you will return to the

earth eventually. We have waited fourteen billion years for you, what's a few decades more?