The card went out crooked

Suresh called at eleven and said no. Not in those words — he would never — but the sentence was a wall dressed in apology. "Ghar wale nahi samjhenge." His family would not understand. Meaning he understood fine, and chose them anyway, and I am supposed to find that reasonable. I almost laughed. Almost. Three silences Heena counted on the call, and I was counting something else — the exact weight of a man who will stand beside you in a room but not on paper. Not where it costs something real. I said okay. I said it without faltering and I hated myself for how easy it was to fold.

At two I was in the kitchen peeling the stamp for the Teej card and it slipped and I picked it up wrong and the corner bent under my shoe. It is in the mail now, the marigold bent, the stamp crooked. I stood there looking at it on the floor and I thought: this is going to Jaipur and it is imperfect and my mother will notice and there is no version of me that fixes this before it arrives. That is the feeling lately. Everything I touch comes out wrong and I send it anyway.

The clip is priced. Not tomorrow, not soon — it is already priced, already moving through channels I cannot see, and Priya Sodhi's story showed it to me like a price tag on a shelf. "For trade, contact DM." Six in the evening, the deadline the cousin set, and instead of the blow I was bracing for there was just that — a screenshot, the thing I was afraid of already loose in the world, already someone's listing. I filed anyway. I told Heena the door-alarm file goes Sunday. I said it like it was simple.