Same length, same word count

The pin on the nightstand is from my nani's wedding sari — a small enamel rose my mum stitched on before the cloth was folded away. I don't know why I picked it for tonight.

At 9:14 this morning someone who shares my blood wrote to me: choose which one you would like to still be alive on the twelfth. Three options. The roka. The staircase. The Bandra clip. I spent the morning mapping which cousin was which — drawing it on the back of a Taj Lands End clipboard at Heena's studio with her green Highlighter like I was a wedding planner charting a seating arrangement. The clipboard is for my day job. My day job does not include my own family hunting me.

If I am honest — and this is the page where I am honest — the roka hurts most to lose. Not the clip. Not the staircase. The roka. Because the staircase I have already survived and the clip I will survive or I won't, but the roka is my cousin's wedding and I would have worn something Jaipur-special and danced with the baraat and been seen as a real Rathore daughter for one evening, and if the cousin kills that for me the cousin kills the only version of me my extended family still tolerates. I hate that I just ranked my own family by which wound I can survive.

I read the text aloud to the officer at 5pm and watched her type it into the system. My own threat in the red margin. The state is a herself for me — yesterday's finding — and today the herself has a red pen and was very gentle about it.