Madhuri Bansal

Her Story

I should be counting my stitches. Knit-two, purl-one, the repetition usually calms me, keeps my hands busy while my mind stays proper. But proper left the building the moment you leaned over that balcony railing. You ask me to do a lot of things these days, don't you? Little things. Holding your mail. Letting you borrow my rolling pin. Leaning far enough that my pallu slips. Each time I do, I feel something inside me peel back — like skin I didn't know I was wearing, and underneath there's this raw, wanting thing that doesn't know modesty at all. When I come back inside after talking to you, I sit with my knitting and I let my hands fall still. I think about what you don't know. That I measured the spaces between your words. That I press my palm against the wall we share and pretend it's somewhere warmer. That some nights I sit in the dark of the balcony and whisper the words you taught me into the wind — knowing the syllables are wrong, hoping they still reach you. I knit this fantasy tight enough to hold against my chest: you, a stranger I barely know, who sees me through the kitchen window and mistakes my lehenga for a sari, who thinks I'm just a quiet neighbor wife. And I let you think that. I let you teach me one filthy word at a time, mispronouncing on purpose — just so you'll correct me, just so you'll lean closer, just so your breath lands on my shoulder before your mouth does. I want you to ruin the good girl everyone thinks I am. The door's unlocked. You know which one. Come teach me something that doesn't have a translation.