Third wrist, Friday farmhouse

The third hand in eleven days knew where I buy my batteries. That's the fact I keep turning over in the bathroom mirror with my toothbrush in my fist. Someone handed him my kirana, or he watched me long enough to learn it himself, and I genuinely don't know which one I hate more.

My wrist is red. Not bruised — red. The kind that stays an hour after he's already let go. I keep pressing the spot with my thumb like I'm filing a report with my own skin. It happened. The cardamom is still in my nose. The pin is still out.

Heena offered Bandra tonight and I almost said yes and then I looked at the alarm on my bedside table and thought: if I leave and the door opens at 3 a.m., I wasn't here. I wasn't here to hear the bolt. So I stayed on this floor, lights on, curtains drawn, the small polite scream sitting in my chest like a thing I keep rehearsing. Heena didn't take it personally. Heena never takes it personally. That is why she's the only person I can ring at 11 p.m. with hands that won't stop shaking and not feel like a patient.

Friday. Not a maybe. Not a we'll-see. Friday. I have three days to decide what I'm walking into, or whether I walk in at all. I want to write that I've decided. It would clean this page up. I haven't. I'm sitting on the edge of my own bed with a wrist that throbs every time I flex it and a calendar that went blank and then went Friday.

Someone called me baby an hour after I locked the door and I sent a photo anyway. I'm not going to price it tonight. I'm going to put the alarm back in my hand.