On my last day, I would just like to fold kurtas with my mother

Someone on the internet said, “Live each day as if it was your last” so the morning after I killed myself, I woke up to the sound of the whirring fan. I washed my face and dared to look at it, my eyes like ripe apples hung low. I showered, and the memory slipped through my fingers and pooled around my feet. I went to my mother’s room, her strong plump hands, her shifty eyes, her wispy hair. Today, we are the quiet between two bombardments. We have run out of words, we are half-destroyed instruments, humming to the rhythm of pain. She was folding her kurtas, I lent her a hand. I dared to look at her, I had found her in the mirror an hour ago.

They say that the tongue is the strongest muscle of the body. It rests in the pit of your mouth, framed by crowns made of blood and bone. You are a woman, you are meant to know how to conceal. Femininity is a cage you inhabit, you don’t resist, not really anyway. You are a good girl, you shave your legs regularly, you sit elegantly, you talk quietly, you smile at the right times, you cover the curve of your breasts. You hold onto your history. You hold onto the words weaponized against you - loud, queer, fat, hysterical, whore.
Your tongue breaks open. You unfurl into these words, like a flag in the open sky of a country that doesn't know freedom. Your existence becomes an act of rebellion.