for the longest time i didn't know how to hug.

in my family touch was as rare as honest joy.

there were only two ways of being at home:

enduring repetition or distracted escape.

when my friends began to hug me i went cold.

i froze up like a marble corpse.

don't be so ajay, they'd joke. but i'm still only me.

the window cuts up the sky like my mother cut up

the cake my sister made for me on my birthday:

chocolate truffle, clapped around, sung over.

we don't talk anymore except in rituals of language.

family, after a point, is just a genetic habit

but people wear habits as robes to feel holy.

i only wear a tshirt which rubs against estranged parts

of my skin as i expand in deep breaths.

i remember the strap of my mother's bag move last night.

it wasn't moved by anyone but by the tension of its own shape

which is how it relates to everything around it:

my mother's hurry, the sofa-cum-bed, my unhurried gaze.

the shape of my experience exceeds its language.

the moment between someone hugging you and you

hugging them back is when you begin to know

what a hug is, beyond an overlap of touch,

a ritual of warmth, as an embrace of all that you possibly are,

even if all that is only me.

~ ajay

24/8/2024