Um... Can we share what you wished for? I ask, waiting for her reply.

(You better give me the iPhone, I silently think while glaring at her expectantly.)

It's probably best to make use of what we have right now, instead of brooding over what we could have gained.

you have a shark’s eyes,

all glinting and hard,

sharp as a blade.

they squint as they pass

over me:

you look at me like i’m a meal.

i know you are mostly anglerfish,

dangling affection like a lure.

in kindergarten,

while the other children tip-toed

carefully—protectively—

i remember counting the cracks

i stomped and stepped on,

gleefully counting all your vertebrae

i was breaking along the way,

hoping to find you twisted and limp

on the floor like a dead spider

when i got home.

i know you are mostly cockroach;

not even nuclear fallout

could kill you.

in high school,

my best friend said

she could tell her mother anything,

and i shuddered.

you fed on me like carrion,

picking the flesh from my bones,

your talons digging tight

around my soul.

i know you are mostly dragon,

hoarding me like treasure,

fierce and fire-breathing.

you bare your teeth and

people run, but i am chained

at your side,

less person and more

possession.

Suffering isn’t an aesthetic (I’ll begin there),

Is what I want to say,

but that’s not always true.

We wear it on our skin,

through our eyes,

in the air around us - or there’s, just, something-

-about us.

That says: everything;

Just as it is.

Isn’t okay.

We hurt.

And we’re told to just

b r e a t h e -

or given meds (if we’re lucky, if they fit, if they’re right),

or not (but need them).

And for some if us - you know who we are - you know it’s bad,

when they don’t, can’t, won’t

say:

“everything is going to be alright.”

We’re told we’re chronic. We’re invisible.

We’re not. Okay?

Use your eyes, your logic, your emotional intelligence -

Your gut.

Because we’re missing (a lot),

or we’re irratic (or not),

- and sometimes. Most times

we are the kindest, you’ll find, of the lot.

I know how this goes (do you?) -

“the wisest are the kindest...”

How do you think we fit

that plot? That role; got that way?

Because pain, teaches,

in all it’s forms.

It’s one of those

universals of humanity -

what makes us, us.

Compassionate, fragile, but strong.

Tired (so tired), but persisting.

Kind. Brave. So sad.

All because, in part, we are pain(ed).

Our bodies are broken-

(may be, could be)

-minds sharp as a whip.

Or our spirit is cracked

yet our resilience: insane.

Tears threaten to overflow and my chest heaves with the familiar sorrow that seizes my chest inexplicably. I was raised to never wear my emotions on my sleeves and composure in public was key. Yet I’m melting to the floor, seeking out the darkest corner of this space. Sadness is passing through like an unexpected rainstorm that even the weatherman failed to predict. Tears freely streaming down my face and I’m gasping for so much air over and over. Whispering to a devil that doesn’t exist trying to make blind deals for one more moment with you.

Humanity died fast when the list appeared.

First came the suicides. When you see yourself at the bottom of the list that supposedly represents all of humanity, it’s hard not to lose hope.

Then came the murders. Of the people who had discovered the list. The people who kept it running. Some decided that the list was fake, and that anyone who believed in it deserved death.

Eventually, we stopped. Killing and fighting and tearing each other apart. At least for a while.

I was born with a number on my hand. I don’t remember what it was. No one can tell me, because you can only see your own number. But right now, my number is 3,425,007. Out of the eight billion people on the earth.

That’s one of the better numbers. My mom told me once that her number had dropped to 6,331,909. I thought she was kidding until I heard the gunshots. One that took my sister. And one that took my mom.

I don’t know why my mom killed my three-year old sister. I don’t know why she killed herself. And I don’t know what the number on her corpse was. Because as far as I know, your number stays with you forever. Even when the only one who can see it is dead, it lives on.

I’d like to imagine my little sister was 1 on the list. Maybe 2, for that time she killed my fish by pouring too much food into its bowl. But other than that, she was perfect. I can’t understand why the cosmic power that decides where we stand would put her at anything less.

No one else understands, either. Everyone has their own idea of the list. I guess that before it showed up, people were content with their own views of right and wrong. But now that someone is deciding for us, we’ve gotten desperate.

A few streets from my house is a church. The sign outside says “God forgives all-Numbers are warnings, not punishments”. The church three blocks away is telling me to ignore the list entirely, that it’s a construct of the devil made to deceive us and turn us away from God. And the synagogue on Bailey Cove promises a way to move your number up the list, and a better understanding of why you were ranked where you were in the first place.

My mom and I went to a church back in our hometown that told us we had to be honest with our numbers and share them with the world. The next church we tried told us the list was a gift from god, to tell us when to repent. My mom loved that answer, but I wasn’t sure. I stopped going to church as soon as I could, and mom’s death didn’t do anything to persuade me to return.

I’ve always wondered who’s at the top of the list. You’d think they’d be on the news all the time, sharing their five-step plan to being a good human being. But only one person has ever claimed to have 1 embedded in their skin. Anton Icara, famous actor, TV personality, and philanthropist. When the first rape allegations came, the woman who had submitted them had been completely ostracized. After all, this man was the pinnacle of human decency. No accusations could ever stand up to that little number on his hand.

Security cameras don’t see your number, though. All they saw was Anton’s fifteenth murder. The same woman who had tried to tell the world what he was really like lay dead on the floor, a knife in her chest.

I wonder sometimes if he really was the best person on earth. If our own view of morality fell apart somewhere along the way, and he wasn’t lying when he told us that he was the only person who understood what perfection was. It seems plausible. When I was a kid, I wondered why the Bible banned so many things that sounded perfectly moral to me. Maybe the list works the same way. Maybe that’s why giving to charity didn’t move my number up the list, but watering my houseplants did. Anton Icara might have been right.

Then again, if he was lying, why did we all believe him?

I don’t know why the number on my hand is there. I don’t know what it means, what it wants from me. I don’t know who decides our numbers. And I don’t know what will happen when I die.

All I know is when this bullet goes through my head, I won’t be looking at the number on my hand.

We brought you home from the hospital wrapped in the soft, pink blankie your grandmother found among my old things. You were tiny, so tiny that your head fits into the palm of my hand, curls and all. Your fingers were so little and pink, as were your toes. I wanted to be overwhelmed by love when I held you.

Instead, I felt fear, crippling waves of doubt, that made me want to throw up and cry (and I did). You were so little, so incredibly helpless. And I was supposed to be your primary caregiver. Me. A twenty-three-year-old girl with a half-completed graduate degree and a husband, I was in the process of getting uncoupled from. I wasn’t ready for this, for you. I didn’t know how to do it. I mean, I could barely function without my pills and my weekly visits to the therapist.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help,” said your grandmother, one of those capable, cheery women who were always on top of everything.

“Will you hold her?”

I thrust you into her arms and stumbled out of the cab, yet again.

I threw up in front of the Chettiar house; the only house left standing on our street. Developers had colonized everything else: all those pretty houses with their airy courtyards and gardens filled with warbling birds and soft, fleshy garden lizards.

Instead, there were lines of flats named after various mythological places-- Dwaraka, El Dorado, Avalon—with smooth white walls, long glass windows and uniformed security guards.

Natesan, our security guard, refused to let the cab inside, at first. “Owners vehicles only,” he told the weedy, young man who had driven us there.

I had reached out for the door handle, was all ready to scramble out in my oversized cotton nightgown with its vomit stains and wet patches when your grandmother came to the rescue.

“I’ve been an owner here for thirty years,” she told Natesan. “Do you want me to call the building secretary to prove it?”

Natesan looked at her, at her eighty-five kilos wrapped in starched cotton and rightful indignation, at the string of pearls around her neck and the big red bindi on her forehead, at the iPhone she brandished in her hand and the baby(you) sleeping on my lap.

“One time only, madam,” he told her and waved the cab inside.

My girlhood still lay curled up in my bedroom, a fetid, furry beast that had nowhere else to go. I walked past shelves crammed with Blyton and Dahl, writers I had loved before realizing they wouldn’t have loved me back. (I was too brown for them). Past my collection of Barbie dolls with their unrealistic proportions, painted faces and plasticky high heels. Sepia-toned photographs, a Backstreet Boys poster and a calendar your father had given me the year we started dating.

I put you down on my bed, on a sheet printed with springs of flowers and the odd butterfly, and prayed that you wouldn’t fall off or pee.

“Wait,” said your grandmother, resourceful lady that she is.

She spread out a plastic sheet, placed two pillows on either side of it, and then set you in the centre.

You looked uncomfortable.

You started bawling.

“I think she’s hungry,” said your grandmother. “You need to feed her.”

I whipped open the buttons of my filthy nightie. My breasts—bigger than ever, with dense brown nipples-- were leaking; they had been for a while now.

I offered you a nipple.

Most people, I know, don’t hesitate to help themselves to nipples.

You turned away and continue bawling.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked your grandmother.

She said nothing. Instead, she guided your mouth to my nipple.

You clamped onto it.

It hurt.

Not bad, but it did.

“How long will I have to do this?” I asked your grandmother. “I don’t think I can take it.”

“You’ll learn to,” she told me.

I lay back on my girlhood bed and watched you feed off me.