A Diary Entry About Darkness by Neha Bhattacharya

 Dear Diary, 

You see, in January,  the sky is at its darkest again. I have noticed that things feel darker when my feet are cold. My feet stay cold all the time these days. When there is no light outside, the darkness inside takes on a deeper, blacker hue. The kind of darkness you see for a couple of seconds after you put all the lights out at night. Those two seconds of darkness feel darker than the rest of the dark until your eyes adjust to it. My eyes seemed to have bypassed the need for such an adjustment. 

Even so, the sun broke out the other day (although briefly) after days of dense, sticky darkness hanging in the sky. Majorly torn between the impulse to scurry away to a dark corner and walk into the sun squinting, with one eye open, I moved my desk by the window for the day. It was-- I sensed--  a fair bargain for it was equidistant to my dark, familiar corner and the blinding sun. From the window,  I watched iridescent rays bounce off the surface of the water and dive deep into the ocean, delusive enough to dream of reaching its heart. Oh, the foolishness! If only they knew that the ocean knows no warmth, no light. In the evening, with its slimy nimble fingers, I saw the ocean strangle the sun: gently at first and then with all its might. It waited until the last breath of warmth left its limp body; It waited until the yellow fire turned black and blue and the seven colours dissolved into its opaque nothingness. Then, satisfied, it lit a cigarette and reclined into a chair replaying the act in its head as smoke curled out of its murderous fingers fogging up the sky with it ashy darkness. Detached and distanced from the crime scene, I watched transfixed by the window,  as the sky filled up with heavy, irksome clouds like a  funeral hall fills up with stuffy guests in black suits that no one invited. 

As I laid in bed in the dark that night after witnessing the cold-blooded murder, I realized that my relationship with the darkness had changed noticeably. Merely a year ago, I collected the little envelopes of sunshine that the sun brazenly slipped under my doors and windows. I’d collect them from off the floors or sometimes off the walls and store it in a box. That box turned the blazing sun into cool pieces of shadow; I could flip through the pages without burning my hand. The dark was a whole shade card lighter, the cold only soothing. Lying in bed in the dark, I remembered wishing for more pieces of shade greedy enough never to wanting to let go. I wished for more water than what soothed the parched tongue. I wished for only the shade of the tree.  Oh, such a reckless, ambitious fool I was! How was I to know that too much water drowns you, too much shade chills your heart. These days, between drowning and freezing to death, I get to see the darker shades of darkness. The kind of darkness that the aberrant specks of light obscure. The sort of darkness that the eye never gets to adjust itself to. I no longer need the sun to write me letters that arrive in envelopes of sunshine. That’s just too cheesy. Now I know that I do not need the sun to survive. I do not need to see to flap my arms together to swim to the surface. I engrave my letters on the dark walls these days. I etch it on the walls and my heart and then trace it with my fingers all night. My feet are always cold, but my fingers stay warm.