Side notes to everything I have ever known

I take my tea with two teaspoons of brown sugar, but some fine mornings, I betray my routine and chase the jolt in my fingers as I put the spoon down after just one or when I reach for another after the second. Even if for a fleeting moment, I love not recognising myself, not knowing where I will lead myself towards, not knowing what words my lips will form.

Truth is, I do know myself. I know myself the way one knows their childhood bedroom: walls that feel crumbly to the touch, a lightbulb that dims on and off, stuffed toys strewn about, cute posters that have yellowed out over the years. Maybe an oddly-placed closet that has heard vile curses from people who stub their toes against it, maybe a pristine vase of plastic bouquets that sits atop a shelf—meant to be admired from afar, but never touched lest it become dirty. You stand at the door's threshold and take a mental snapshot, clamouring to savour the nostalgia that washes over you at the mere sight of what was once dear and familiar. It never stays still, though. The bedframe moves from the corner of the room to the middle, innocuous scratches and ink blots appear on the walls, the posters get ripped off. Taking a closer look at what remains is terrifying. You can now see the blotches of dirt on your vase, bugs crawling out of it as you never cared to clean it; after all, why would you, when it always looked so very perfect from afar? A long-lost friendship bracelet, the one you cried over for weeks, sits abandoned in your closet drawer.

I see myself: sometimes so hazy that I cannot see a person at all, sometimes so brilliantly vibrant that I fail to fully comprehend the colors. I turn the pages of a book I've read a thousand times, yet the words keep shifting, hiding, and simmering each time my eyes fall upon them. I see the little notes phasing in and out around the margins—begging me to notice them but, at the same time, too shy to be read. I have always loved the side notes; I love the cold, spiked dread that churns in my stomach once they appear, I love the way my knees tremble as I begin to piece together what they say.

Sometimes, they write themselves in languages I will never be able to learn, sometimes I know without even looking. The ink plays peekaboo from the margins, daring me to look away and pretend it never existed. If I ignore it for too long, it threatens to crush my windpipe under its claws.

Sometimes, I can barely read within the margins as my vision clouds and breath hitches; that doesn't matter much to me anyways, the side notes write who I am. They write the exceptions, the surprises, the unexpected, the unplanned. They write me unadulterated, undiluted. I run my frenzied gaze on their prophecies every ticking second of the day, in the hopes that I might just be able to read between the lines.

Atiqa Tanjeem is an 18-year-old student who likes to occasionally translate her inner world into readable words.