Urdu is all crevices and palaces, and I stand under the balcony of sound,
                                                                                ii (ی).

She owns a bungalow that is choked with bougainvillea. A typical Lahori residence, infested
with life, crawling with summer bugs. Note to self: not all letters are able to afford this.
Yay (ی), one of the three long vowels, when used as a suffix, creates a sound of belonging, of
                                             smallness, of femininity, oftentimes pain.
   Some nights, as a star falls, she looks down.
                                                                                                                          بام/balm is the word for
     terraced spaces. Muses stand in the enclosure, lovers down below. Rule of the tongue:
     unearned verbal conversations are a form of Beckettian vulgarity. Since the rule is not
                                    composed by Beckett, it must be avoided at all costs.

Katha (n.) is another word, a leaf that crushes into colors, green and brown. It comes from the
         khair (n.) /khayr/: Senegalia catechu, a deciduous hardwood tree native to the Indian
                                                                           subcontinent.
                                                         Khair (ajd.), /khayr/: goodness.

                  When the khair grows in ی’s garden, we make a pigmented paste out of it.
Kattha.ii (adj.), /kattha.ii/:                                                        “[a derivative] of kattha leaf, often
   a chocolatey brown pigment used in dyes or edible extract used in the preparation of betel
                                                            leaf, the color of catacheu.”

I am walking past the school fountain; it is my last day in the building. I wear a skirt the color
                                                                                 of…

          Sometimes an older lady – since it is only in antiquity and porous bones that we
          afford them creation – would burn almonds and add a low-fat aromatic oil to the
          cinders. A paste meant to sit in your waterline when applied with a toothpick,
                                                                        Surma (n.),
                                                                      surmaii (adj.)

I am walking past the dry school fountain; it is my last day in the building. Ever. I wear a
skirt the color of ash. There is a makeshift stage in the school grounds many paces away, and
they are playing Coke Studio, Season 11 – a rare occasion at a school notorious for its traditional discipline.

A girl stands in my periphery, a figure in a sari by the fountain. A sari binds you in a ritual at
the cusp of your matriculation exam, when you let your womanhood sit on your inky palm.
                                         I walk past the katthaii drapes and henna blouse.

I am walking back, the girl of sixteen in a katthaii sari. A man, much worked up, towers over
in the contours of a father. I recognize the 56-year-old school disciplinarian in charge with a
heart disease.
                                     I am walking by, like walking by someone’s balcony,

The older woman says something crooked, and a putrid smell fills the dry fountain; it reaches
my nostrils. The angry man shouts at his daughter. I look closely, the girl in kattha is red-
eyed,

                              Dev-mala (n.), mythology. Dev-mala-ii (adj.), mythological.

I am walking back; the girl in a sari is still standing by the fountain. I recognise the 56-year-
old woman. I am passing them by, like in front of her balcony, the angry man shouts at his
daughter, she is too much, too early, too woman.

The girl in kattha is red-eyed. I look closely and mythology sobs.
More students in saris, skirts (they were the hype), and shalwar suits become onlookers:
genderless, naked, curious, smiling the smiles that can tear away at cheeks.

Pairs multiply, eyes pop out of sockets and litter the tiled courtyard, and the ground is
sluggish. Someone walks, and I hear the crunch of cornea – and a splatter.
My cranium is giving way, I jump inside the fountain fully clothed, my grey skirt contrasted
with a turquoise headband.

                                       I hold my breath and turn into a letter underwater.
“There are not enough letters in my language for fetal circles,” I think to myself. English has
a C and a G, both capital. My body becomes a Yay. She sounds like a cheer and produces the
                                                    suffix of belonging and of pain – ii.
                                                                            ی
              My body that’s encircled by body by body by body that is sin, a sin with a capital S.
             Sin is revered, we respect sin; body is sinful, we lynch bodies. My breath is cut short,
                                                      my limbs want to live, the body resists,
                                                              I keep her bent into a Yay (!).

Someone shouts at me, and I think, “I am not wearing a blouse that fits.” I hear the muffled
sound of the disciplinarian in charge. Why do I stand and gawk?
I wonder why.
I pick pace again, past kattha from the khair tree, past the surma in burnt almond eyes.
I know she would jump too, the ash in her waterline flowed
out before her.
The fountain is bone dry. I have never once seen any water in it, except for the occasional
stagnant rainwater from many last nights. She would jump into mossy fountains, water
streams, and myself. Don Juan.

Kattha (n.) also means a tale in my language. It does not inflect with any words of belonging.