Words are the Enemy by Damyanti Biswas

An empty woman seated on a park bench, I sat checking out people on their morning walks.

You moseyed on by. For a moment, you took in my vacant ballerina shoes with no legs. The iron rods of the bench peeking through the gaps in my slim-fitted sleeves. The space inside my muffler where my throat should have been.

Brows creased, you walked on. My hollow checkered skirt flapping in the breeze would stay with you, my non-gaze, and my smile that wanted to meet you, but stayed in. You hummed a line in an unfamiliar tongue that made me imagine dry plains, where the sun takes a long time to set.

Your head full of your toddling daughter back home, the wife who doesn’t answer your calls at midnight, you ambled on, your arms laden with shopping bags full of milk, ham, cheese, your heart heavy with longing. You want your daughter to taste the air you breathe, to nosh on the ham sandwiches your roommate laughs at. Again, he says, you’ve made those again. Your neighbors back home wouldn’t believe how much there is to eat. You don’t talk to them about how water flows from taps. It is, after all, just water.

I sat there empty. I’d worked at it. I’d driven away longing, hunger, sound. Chased away thoughts, words: yours as well as mine. Words are the enemy.

When you turned the corner of the path and disappeared behind a hedge, I felt my stomach as it once used to be: rumbling, alive, aware of the crunch of ham and cheese. I felt my skin, its pining for touch. I heard the traces of your voice settling in my hair, on tree leaves. My eyes filled.

I sat with your song in my throat: not altogether full, but no longer empty.

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Damyanti’s short fiction has been commended at the Bath Flash Fiction award. She’s published at Litro, Griffith Review Australia, Lunch Ticket magazine, Atticus Review, and other journals in the USA and UK. More at: www.damyantiwrites.com

Photo: Heung Soon