10:00 PM

The mattress creaked as I dived into white sheets, pretending I was diving into snow. I lie on my side and fix my gaze on the world outside my bedroom balcony. I’ve recently developed this habit now of leaving the curtains open as I sleep. How could one deny the skyline view of the city, painted and glazed in starlight just for the occasion. Glowing for me. Just for me. In my 27th storey cocoon in the sky.

Well, my bed was more like a nest really. My handmade beige bedcover was pushed ruggedly onto the right side of the bed, serving as some kind of picnic blanket for my hairbrush, uniform and school bag. My room on the other hand, was a time capsule.  First there are the faded Justin Beiber pictures, offspring of a bad quality printer, cut with an excited and impatient hand. Then there are One Direction posters ripped out of a 7 dollar magazine and put on the high part of the wall, putting too much tape while tiptoeing on my bed to reach, and despite all my effort, I still managed my signature disproportionate tilt.

Then there is a diagram of a fairy house pasted on top of pink cardboard paper and taped onto the wall. I tell my friends that this was made a few years ago, but in truth this fairy house was born just a few months ago, when I as a thirteen year old, was in the pool and saw a huge tree with branches and canopies that was just perfect for a fairy to live in.

Hanging on my doorknob is a small embroidered heart cushion, which was bought in Austria two summers ago. Seeing as everything I put on my wall never comes off, there’s much more I could tell you about, but I’ll just leave things there...You get the picture. Honestly I just can’t be bothered to take anything off but lets just say I’m…umm, keeping memories.

I kiss the city good night and my mind plunges into the ocean of emptiness, otherwise known as sleep.

Blank. Emptiness.  The mind feels like its infinite. There’s no me, no her, no stress no fear, no love, no story, just peace. Nothing. When I am nothing, the universe is nothing, for I have created the universe and when I sleep, the whole world disappears with me.

6:00 AM

The night-light is switched on and the mind realizes that it is morning and that the world must start again. Last night’s thoughts are recognized and emotions swing back in, the grief, the longing, the dread, the excitement, my existence, my life story, trying to poke holes in the clouds of a groggy head wanting nothing more than to clutch the crumpled blanket and return to the warmth and purity of sleep.

6:50 AM

Still lying down in the pool of warmth and pillow creases, I pull ugly grey school shorts onto unwilling legs and struggle to get into a too small for my size green middle school shirt. Again, a display of my laziness. Never got down to telling my mom I need a new one. A+ for organization. I walk over the brown shiny tiled flooring and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I take the good rest of my 10 minutes to get to the bus by looking at myself in the mirror applying mascara and tying and retying my hair until I’ve looked at myself too long and begin feel like my perfect hair-do needed to be done again because the strand on the bottom left was sticking out. The process starts again and I end by sitting at the edge of my bed with my hand mirror, tilting my head and pretending I’m posing for a school photo. Still unimpressed, I walk back to the bathroom reach again for the mascara wand and -

‘MEERA ITS 7:10 WHAT ARE YOU DOING’ my mom is standing at my door in a pale floral nighty that my nani (grandma in Hindi) had got tailored for her, and looking at me through sleepy eyes while HER thoughts were slowly poking through the sleep in HER groggy head but were abruptly hastened by the urgency to get her lazy, irresponsible daughter up. Intended with love, of course.

7:13 AM

I walk to the sleeping bus stop with faded black converse boots and nod at pale faced children who have just had their story and universe slapped back into their faces, while they stand with school bags slung over little shoulders

-

wanting nothing more

than to clutch that crumpled blanket at the edge of their bed

and return to the warmth and purity

of sleep.