Painting Pain

I grew up in a house where no one shouted the bad news.

- Moazam Shakeel

We learned to hear the hum that lives under silence. When the hum grew too loud, we picked up small tools. A half-dry brush, a needle robbed from mom's sewing box, a pencil shorter than my little finger. These became our voice.I watched my aunt dip the brush in black tea because real paint cost too much. She moved it across the back of an old school chart. The paper curled but she kept going. First came a grey lake, then a sky that looked ready to fall. She never told us whose funeral she saw in her head. She only said, "The paper can hold it, I can't."