So what do I name this feeling? Walking in the park at night with Ammi and Papa on either side, little drops of rain falling on the pavement in front of my feet, on my shawl over my head, there is a name for this. A frustration is ballooning inside me and soon, very soon there will be no way to stop talking, to turn away and say I don't want to go with you, to laugh at this balloon.

Collecting moments watching Jab We Met in Khala's lounge atop Khala's chatt at 3 a.m in the rain and in Roasters at a table by the window in a white shirt that billows in the bathroom mirror looking at my smile and making pulao as Ammi gives instructions and stealing them from Yumna's inbox a perfect sad little happy story making me perfectly sad and happy and in a Tuesday night in a flooded McDonald's wishing Elizeh wasn't there.

There is a rise and fall every day. I ask Ammi, what's going to be in the fridge? He's going to ask me what I did in London, if I'm tired, will he show me the house? And too soon after, bitter as I try to step only on the vertical bricks in the pavement, beginning or end?