Eid Night, Still Dressed

His grey t-shirt was still on his side of the bed where he'd left it — not folded, just dropped, the way he always dropped things when he was thinking about something else. She had not moved it in eleven days. She sat on top of the duvet in the anarkali she'd worn to the iftar, still fully dressed at eleven-fifteen, the bedside lamp making everything amber, and looked at the shirt the way you look at something you've been pretending not to think about.

The house was very quiet. Not the silence of something missing — the silence of something held still.

She'd video-called him at nine, his mother in the background arranging mithai on a tray, the sound of Karachi traffic audible even through the wall. He'd looked tired and happy in the specific way of someone surrounded by people who loved him. She'd said Eid Mubarak three times, once to him and once to his mother and once to the room. After she hung up she sat with the phone warm in her palm and felt the distance not as absence but as a kind of pressure — the weight of how much she wanted him on the same side of the world.

The box was on the nightstand. White. Still sealed.

She reached across and picked up his shirt instead.

The fabric was soft in the way of something washed many times, and when she brought it to her face the scent was still there — not strong, just present, the way he was present in this room even when he wasn't. She exhaled against it. The sound that came out was quieter than she expected, and lower.

She lay back against the pillows with the shirt still against her face and felt the anarkali settle around her — the skirt compressing beneath her, the embroidered bodice pressing faintly into her sternum, all that fabric arranged around her like something ceremonial. Her knees were together. The layers of the skirt pooled across her thighs, heavy and warm from the hours she'd spent in it, and underneath she was aware of her own heat in a way that felt specific and private.

Her left hand held the shirt to her face. Her right hand rested on her stomach, above the embroidery, feeling her own breath move.

She thought about calling him again. She didn't.

The box on the nightstand was still sealed. She was aware of it the way you're aware of a door you haven't opened yet — not urgently, just as a fact about the room. She breathed in against the grey cotton, slow, and felt the exhale come out longer than the inhale, and let her right hand move from her stomach to the top of her thigh, where the fabric was thickest, where the layers of the anarkali skirt lay heaviest.

She did not move further. Not yet. She held the shirt against her face and let herself want him with her whole body in the amber quiet, her knees still together, the box waiting, his scent the only thing making any of this feel like it could work.