Dana to Ma.

Dear Ma,

I don't know where I am.

But this is a cozy place. There’s no cold bleeding of my thoughts or an excuse of my unnoticed sighs. The sky is ... as if I have moved beyond feeling like a mouse... like the dried leaves stuck in an old woman's throat or Whitman’s universe. I’m going to tell you how I’d been; how I grew up even when I was inside that tiny room in our tiny house
I will tell you everything. I promise.
This is will be last thing I write about my life that I didn't recognise till now.
I was not as quiet a person, you knew me to be. I talked and made a fool out of myself around friends- those "drifting spirits". Back at home, I used to call your husband names. I hate him. My face reminds me of him, I hate whatever I got from him- the eyes, the nose... the anger and frenzy.
Maybe I am scared of the frenzy more than I hate it. I swear I won't think about those once I am done writing this... I owe you.
Remember, how you used to cry thinking that I was asleep and you would sit by me because I would catch dengue or malaria every other month or year? How would I sleep with such temperature at the pit of my tear glands? I think you knew but didn’t believe in my tossing-and-turning.
I so wished to ask you, "How are you ma? Why did you marry him? Are you happy?"
You somehow had the power to reconcile… how could you? Why did you? That man ate your breaths. Your silence frustrated me. He wasn’t a vicious man... but he acted like one—way too many times.
I hope you read my journal and if you hate me, hate me good spirits— I met men of all sorts… lived with them. Lived their lives a little. They are not so important to forget myself. My Self. If I were home, I’d be a living a dead life. I would have to. Right. Left. Right?
I wished to wear off… like little pebbles… like sand into nothing. I love you- you gave me this life. Life is wonderful at its whimsical quirks.
I wished to sing. And join all those youth organizations which worked their ass off under the heat to help poor people.
I am applying to a nursing school. If I aim for money I may never become what I am supposed to be. I want to touch and feel the hunger of misery. I want to calm the suffering of others and treat them—heal them. Touch their hearts and be a molecule of their happy-tears. I want to choke their diseases in my embrace and plant a flower of hope in their struggling eyes.
Is it too romantic? Well, I always was one—didn’t you hear my poems at all, ma?

I don’t know where I am right now—but I am definitely getting somewhere. I don’t think I can fly back.
I love you. I love you. I love you Ma. You’re my first word.
Let me be and speak for you.
Your Self-winged
Dana.