Tago Mago in my head

Whisper in my ear, lad,
You’re still my parent friend,
Throw me out of my bag,
Ask me “Are you dead?”


It is a late hour. I am shuttling boxes between two buildings.

The lighting in the new room is different. This room is large. Light from the ceiling center bulb has to cross a longer distance before it touches a surface, and there are few surfaces of a rich wooden finish to give its reflections a vibrant bounce. In fact things are quite run down. Strangely, the closet door, with its white plastic coating missing in certain places, reminds me of Rajshahi. Rajshahi where everything is run down, even the newly-constructed roads. Rajshahi that only smells of strangers' bedsheets that I must lie in so that I can catch the earliest bus the next day.

Somehow I never got the concept of the extended family.

I fold a few more clothes. I put them away.

I have already put in a request for extra furniture. I told them that I hardly have enough space for half my stuff. What I didn't tell them is I'm scared that tomorrow, when all my things are put away, this room will be as obscenely sterile as my last.

I have a neat row of books on my shelf, and empty photoframes never taken out of their packaging.

Neurotic, I pace the floor.

I like carpeting. I like the assurance of my shed skin finding a warm home and remaking friends with my shed hair. But alas, there is no carpet in the new room. For all the coldness its floor affords, I might as well be sleeping on the ceiling.

I discover clothes from the first time I left home. Here I find brother's red t-shirt and am hit by an image of him smiling at me. And there mother's cashmere sweater.... I move from room to room, and yet my home is nowhere to be seen.

Every time I move, it is like leaving home all over again.

I remove the empty trashbags from the floor so as not to slip. And fall.

I make up my mind to call mother at daybreak.