What do you want to be when you grow up?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

I remember the first time someone asked me that question

Moments after I had walked down the steep, red stairs into the garage where they kept grandma's body, with balls of cotton in her nostrils and her face more welcoming than I had ever seen when her skin was still flush with the flow of blood

and I didn't have it in me to hide the flash of anger sweeping across me when I turned to the lady digging into my shoulders with her red nails

But the anger wasn't at her or her nails but at the child that I had been who wanted to watch the monarch butterfly on my parents' big-screen television instead of answering their grandma's calls from the other room to speed up the fan

And it was at my father for slashing me open with a knife in front of his mother

turning me into the helpless little girl he had wanted his mother to be,

One that she could never love. 

In that dusty library surrounded by books on the Russian Revolution and post-colonial fascism in the midst of discussing the Katyas and Darias of his dreams,

he had slipped in the question, an expectation gleaming in his eyes, almost bordering on hunger

And I knew what I should say but the child in me who had not been appeased for so long leapt out of their bones and settled into his lap, hands clasped tight with excitement

But the lap froze into a block of ice because I couldn't be the Katya he wanted or even the Daria he detested and

his hunger dissolved into nothingness before fading to indifference

And I was scared

of the love that I never got the chance to receive.

Now, I cannot tell you that I want to be intoxicated, inebriated, and stashed away for the rest of eternity while holding your hand at the mediocre fair in the middle of the crowd of ill-mannered school-children who grew up too soon and listless adults who never got the chance to grow up

I cannot tell you that I just want to exist in the ridges on the tips of your fingers or curl up and fall asleep in the dips of your collarbones till you forget I am there, a part of your body that you will take for granted until it is gone

And I cannot tell you that all I crave is normalcy in the form of peeling tangerines at the kitchen counter while you stir the chicken curry that is too spicy for you and too bland for me

Because that is not something you can ever give me, and

my heart is not muscles and tendons the way yours is;

it's made from a metal wire that has been stretched and stretched for far too long for it to maintain its elasticity anymore.

That child in me wants to tell you that I want to grow up to be a person that people can just love

Or that I don't want to grow up at all

But

I am too tired

To speak in metaphors

or wrap my emotions up in gauze and imagery

So you can take pride in being with someone intellectual

and feel better about yourself.

So,

I just kiss your chest and say goodbye. 

Adrita Zaima Islam is a half-fledged person trying to be a full-fledged yapper. Send them your condolences at [email protected].