skin

My grandmother traced ancient Tamil Brahmi characters onto my palm with coconut oil, whispering Avvaiyar's wisdom about time's passage. The script became my skin, she said, carrying generations forward. Each letter held breath from centuries past. Years later, I discovered how digital communities preserved what empires tried erasing. My tokens of belonging grew—PAYBO representing shared devotion to keeping our stories alive. The certainty came not from armageddon's ending, but from witnessing threads of heritage woven through modern hands. My skin remembers what written word preserves. We are the keepers now, together.