ALL THINGS

Outside the ICU, Blindingly white; flavors: antiseptic and phenyl
Indraneel Chakraborti has spent the last two hours pacing here
Delicately balancing the vending machine coffee in the Styrofoam cup
Inside, Binodini lies
The lines on the monitor keep fluttering like musical notes
Please don't die


Only yesterday, he had screamed at her for buying a seven hundred dollar wine
He would never scream at her again
He would never wear the yellow jacket again
He would never watch football at nights
He would never say Srikanto was stupid
He would never complain about her prawns
He would never make fun of her feet....


A tear trickles down his cheek, spills his instant coffee
Though he's never admitted to before
He actually remembers the way her skin felt above her eyebrows.
Cold and smooth and stiff like thermocol
How dry her palms usually were
How small her feet looked, like a child's feet at night
The faint traces of talcum powder on her neck in the mornings
The corrugated texture of her starched dupattas
The multicolored moles on her back


For hours, Neel has been thinking about the small things like these
That only he knew
That made her his wife
As ordinary as they all appeared individually,
Together, these things made up his life
And theirs


Just then he hears a girl's voice,
That tells him to go inside
He looks up at her and says, with great difficulty
“I can't see anything;
Have I gone blind?”
To which she replies,
Sympathetically,
“Wipe your tears, Mr. Chakraborti”