I ask. 

My words, dripping with fleeting hope, like honey from a baby’s chin. We have done this routine countless times since the news broke. This dance that began without a tune, without us knowing when we entered the stage. 

Reassurances that it was simply a mutation—of rabies perhaps—were served to us day and night. But the unfortunate ones, who saw what happened to the infected, knew better. The bitten, even more so; they pled mercy while they could still speak. A clean pierce through the heart. Like cutting into an ice-cream cake on a sunny day. Slow. Deliberate. Merciful. 

Why prolong the suffering? Why be selfish? 

***

Days bleed together like lines on a wet page, meanings being washed away. With nowhere to go, I retreat into myself. 

Outside, the sun might have turned into a red giant. The lone window in our bedroom, barred with splintered wooden planks, shielded with blood-thick curtains, blocked with the furniture we bought together, is yet another portal to the outside world not allowed to exist. 

Yes, these are just things. But from things, we build memories. From memories, we build a home, you said.

I mumbled under my breath, or maybe, I thought of the reply in my head, Why a study table when we had a dinner table, a bedside lamp when we had ceiling lights, a bookshelf when we could simply pile books on top of each other like Jenga blocks. 

The words I recall now transient shapes of clouds.

***

A deep, primal sound rises from your stomach, filling our bedroom painted hospital-blue. 

Your answer is the same always but we don’t share a language anymore. Still, I can guess your cravings. 

It will be like we are living in the sea or the sky or outer space, you said, closing your eyes, imagining the fabric of space ripping in our bedroom. You, an amateur clairvoyant who looked into the future without cold-reading the past. I didn’t argue. I like blue, too. When you opened your softwood eyes, you looked straight at me, into my pupils. I averted my gaze.

***

With the sound comes the smell. The rot inside your mouth permeates the sweat-heavy air. 

I have all your letters. The jasmine fragrance that you sprayed onto them has long dissipated. Sometimes, I think I smell your memories again. Other times, I think I am going insane.

I bring the kitchen knife into the bedroom. The one that you brought from your trip to Japan. You avoided my questions but I knew it cost a fortune. 

A kitchen needs a quality knife like a home craves memories, you said. 

I cling to the news, which emits from an old transistor radio as often as snow in Kathmandu. I dream of an emergency announcement, with open eyes. The booming voice will reverberate inside closed rooms, along the alleyways, through the streets. The whole world will drown in a cacophony and I will finally, finally release the scream stuck inside my throat.

With the knife in my hands, I wonder if hope is cruelty.

***

I stare into your eyes. They have turned into openings of endless wells. Sometimes, I think I see a flicker of bright brown and my ribs seize my heart. Other times, I think I am going insane.

You loved evening walks. All the stray dogs following us as if they were lost trekkers coming upon distant village lights at nightfall. Right in the middle of the park, you opened your tote bag that seemed to have a never-ending supply of sugar-free biscuits. When the dogs followed us home, I stood guard, shooing them away, not letting them reach you. You were not their home. You simply left behind love in your trail.

The knife feels alien in my hands, its coldness sucking the courage I have struggled to gather over countless days and months. Drop by drop. 

I remember the fear, the uncertainty, the thrill sticking to our skin like beads of sweat when we met under the peepal tree that night. Months later, we were at our dinner table going over the weekly grocery list, our bodies leaning against each other, you grabbed my hands and said that you were glad we took the risk. I am, too.

***

Your hands and feet bound with chains rattle against the metal-bed-frame. Clanking, angry, hungry, unable to reach me. These sounds, my lullaby. 

When the blighted wounds on your arm stared at me, I felt the world compress into a glass ball and shatter. 

As I lost you bit by bit, memory by memory, I started wishing to join you. I will follow you anywhere. I think I am insane.

***

The pustules that cover your body often burst, turning into mid-day-sun-colored flowers. 

Your body’s a war zone, signs of decay oozing out of every pore. 

We didn’t sign up for this. You didn’t. Slowly sucked into the center of a black hole. Forced to be waking corpses. Watching. Waiting. Starving.

It was our seventh year when we finally had the talk. We sat across the dinner table. Sometimes people fall out of love, you said. It’s just that what we started with was wrong. As a response, I gave silence. After all, what could I say? I knew it, too.

A month later, the news came. We pretended to forget all the countless conversations that ensued the silence. 

One night, before drifting off to sleep, you said, I am glad we have each other. 

I did, too.

***

Do you remember me, I ask, not waiting for an answer. The reply impossible, irrelevant now.

I am tired. I want to go home. 

I say, or think, or hope.

You have been hungry for so long. 

The knife stares at me. 

       

Shranup Tandukar is a poet/writer from Nepal.