i shed

creative nonfiction by Noor Abdullah

I am stood in the 8-foot-wide patio behind our old house, watering plants that are not mine.

The landlady peers down from her kitchen window and clicks her tongue, shaking her sickly head.

Dew-wet grass stains the back of my trousers, and Mama will be angry; I am growing out of all my clothes and have only three pairs of trousers left—two, now.

I have been running around the house after the tatter-furred calico cat the boys upstairs brought home. The ground beneath me is all thirty-six-year-old cobble chipped, harsh, and unwelcoming.

I cannot run without my shoes on, but I still do, every day.

Today, the stones feel sharper. My heels are tender, and the skin there seems to swell—soft, pus-filled, almost open.

My face twists in sudden pain; my mouth falls open; something hisses.

I feel taller than I have been, though the pain is not quite unfamiliar.

I am worried—why does the sky feel closer to my head?

My spine coils like a snake, and I am shedding a papery skin.

Something beneath me presses outward, pushing against a gossamer surface.

It peels down my arms in pale ribbons, leaving a red shimmer on my new dermis.

I am born again—raw, wet, glistening.

The myna chirps as it always has, and the crows gather around the carcass that might’ve been a friend.

I wait for someone to notice that I am edging the corners of space.

Will the stars fall down my back? Will I breathe in the cold clouds?

It makes me angry, this visibility—this bareness. I want to hide, but there is no cover.

The landlady took down the tarpaulin just yesterday, and I think she knew I would need a place to disappear.

The cat crouches behind the gate, waiting for someone to let it through. The sun swells above, burning its back, until it flinches and darts away. It squeezes under the grate—I wish I could follow it into the bendy shadows that do not stare, or speak, or remember my name.

✶

Noor Abdullah (she/her) is from the chaunsa that grows in Bahawalnagar, the Sahiwali cow that drinks from the banks of the Indus, and the boy who has lived with her since she was four and unaware.