25th December

Currently sitting on the edge of my bed, my fingers keep touching the window glass to feel if it is getting any colder. Winter is passing, as it should. The birdsong and the north wind all seem to be lost behind the pane. The heat is gathered up under my skin. I turn on the ceiling fan, then turn it off, then on again. The bottle of oil on the shelf is still half liquid.

A year ago in Kushtia, I remember breathing the fresh air until my chest hurt, the fields and sky covered in fog. The gloom where I used to hide is no longer here now. I keep asking myself where it went, that heaviness I used to complain about.

It’s Christmas, though not celebrated the way it appears in movies. Sometimes I imagine snow. A church. Christmas lights. Not because I know what I would pray for, but because I want to stand somewhere unfamiliar and feel something sacred brush past me. I was born with a faith I never questioned; now I seem to look for it everywhere. I stand in the present the way I stand in rooms that aren’t mine.

My back rests against the wall. Nothing happens. No shiver. No instinct to reach for a blanket. The cold—it’s slipping away too early. The people who left and the people I pushed away—memories of them keep coming into my thoughts, into my dreams. I try to hold them like a precious glass—careful not to turn my warmth into fracture.

Yesterday, my mother brought a new calendar. It said 2026. The year hasn’t come yet; we are all quite optimistic. I flipped through the pages—January, February—here comes my birth month. Will I be able to age one more year? I reached December. December 25th. Same date—so familiar, yet so far.

I stood there for a while. Sunlight filled the room. My breath grew heavier than it should. I went to the balcony. I leaned against the railing. I exhaled. The air left my lungs, and I couldn’t see it.