I was walking on the side of the road. It was a hot day. Not the type where one picnics out. But the type where one hides to avoid rot. As I walked, my head lost all its water. My hair blew up. My hair became wisps. In hover, my hair followed me like a ghost shelter. I wanted to see the back of my head. I turned and turned but my gaze could not reach it. For a very long time, in the summer’s heat, at the side of the road, I circled.

Sometimes one has to sit down with themselves and redefine a terrible thing into a good thing. Sometimes one has to acknowledge that a thing is only meaningful if afforded meaning. Sometimes meaning can simply be taken away.

So therefore, I have decided: the ghost shelter made up of thirsted wisp hair is an archangel. My archangel is a not a human man or woman, but a sexless genderless raceless bird. It got wings. And a language of tiny tweets and neck shifts. I do not understand it, but I know it is there, perched at the back of my head, like a beacon.

When I had to wait out my disease, I opened youtube and watched BTS’s “Black Swan” over and over again until I fainted out of dehydration.

A black swan is too romanticized. Art is too romanticized. Suffering is too romanticized. Almost to a degree where self love is no longer an option for a path to prod. Where we believe an artist only has weightage in consequence of suffering.

On WhatsApp, my mother calls me: Prophet. I shake. I shake. I shake. I disco.

On Instagram, I tell all my countries— before you, before I: planet.

When it rains, I salt. I turn my walk on the side of the road to a jog. But my hair drinks the water. My ghost gets drunk. My bird ducks, goes silent inside my shirt. Tables have turned. I am now its protector. I find refuge underneath a store’s veranda. I don’t want to be the only one here. I want a suitor. With an umbrella. And good company. Just like in a drama. Or a book. Fed to me. When little girl.

Now big woman. I spent much of my youth burying my dead friends. The other time in bed, watching the internet. Swallowing feed. Breaking knotted hair. And so here in this hair fall, I found out. Self love. Is allowance. For love. From other spaces, places, gazes. As much the world’s as my own’s.

Soon. The rain let up. The heat cooled. Sun played peekaboo. Angel shifted out and about. Tweeting. Everything is not a reclaim. But even then. I stretched my body. Carried on. Seized the day. By its very throat.