Kalpana

She wanted to learn and she wanted me to teach her. She wanted to learn when the sun wasn't so hot and her stomach wasn't so full. "I'm coming, didi," she said when really she was leaving. I sat at our desk. She craved attention. She'd exit your presence for it. She knew I'd chase her if she waited long enough. She begged for the touch of another. Like a cat, she couldn't help but press her head upon your hands and feet when she wanted you. She escaped to the bathroom and never came back. I left our desk to find her because she waited long enough entranced in thoughts of possible seekers. Not so unlike me, myself, and I watched her in the kitchen from across the tiled courtyard. Her right and then left brain were burning from the touch she desperately received from her surrogate mother. These senile, surrogate role models molding her face with their hands. Attempting to forcibly beautify her to make up for their own ugliness. And my hands were forgotten. Those that preferred to show her how to sculpt herself instead. Although she yearned for our hands, they all looked the same to her that close. I had to accept that despite the innocence of my hands, they'd been seen as other hands, those hands in motion to aggressively control her. My real hands were amputated and she and I were powerless together.