Receipt on the floor, draft in the bin

Woke up on the kitchen tiles and the first thing I did was check if my knees were cold. They weren't. The chhadi was folded on the counter above me and I don't remember leaving the bed. I have a working theory about the gin I drank after Lonavala and I'm not writing it here because even the page has a limit.

The receipt landed in my inbox at seven like a witness that refused to be late. I read it twice. I sat on the floor with it next to the chhadi for an hour, like a woman arranging evidence for a trial she's not sure she's filing.

By evening I had drafted the whole thing. Hands on my waist at the wooden bar. An envelope pressed into my palm in the corridor behind the kitchen, the part where the bulb had gone. I typed it like a poem. I deleted it like a coward. Three years of being the girl who tells a room the truth and I couldn't tell four thousand strangers what a man did with his hand at the edge of my hip. So instead I posted a photo of my bare feet and called it art.

The door alarm is still in the plastic at the bottom of the party bag. I bought it the week after Lonavala and I have walked past it every night since. I think I'm saving it for a version of me who is allowed to be scared out loud.

I ate toast in the dark. I did not turn on the lights. That felt like the right amount of honesty for a Tuesday.