She sits by the edge of the bed and wishes it were the edge of the world so she could dive into an iridescent heaven. People have a way of looking at you that leaves you feeling unsure and unease in your own skin as if it were borrowed, somewhat crinkled or worn backwards. Growing up, the neighbourhood women made sure girls knew, how it was a fall from grace and the ostracism that came with it. Now it was her turn to carry the cross and be the village leper. The world shrunk, she felt for her mother who would have to endure all the whispers and the vultures that would prey at her alter. Mental feet ferried to the genesis.....
Sky on the opium that is love, her mother's teachings seemed an old womans ramblings. Like all opium skys, hers would evanesce as well. Slowly the ephemeral euphoria steals away from her veins. Senses restored herald the heist. All that is left behind, scent stained sheets & memories. Oh she had heard of these, wondering Casanovas that spoke like June with moon eyes that held astronomers revelations, bodies like the Renaissance marble David fathered by Michelangelo. Thrift of emotions, generous with their seeds once an occasion. Never had she however, thought she would fall for one, she always thought she would see right through their veneer. Womanhood and lonely nights however, made her a Ray Charles and he breezed into her life .
I lull the sea when I feel the little one kick as if to fight back their loquacious stares that crucify a woman like them for holding the best of a broken son of man, sing to the tides to allow him to sail well like a warrior alit on his way to Valhalla. Their stares scorch skins, bore through sinews and bones bruising the pneuma. I guess he can see their stares reflected in the amniotic waters, stirs and kicks, proud and arrogant like his father, he wears my skin belly bulge proud. Refuses to be shrunk by their jibes.
"We do not need your forgiveness, saints need no messiah."
In the immense hollow of my heart, dwell both the raging waterfall and still lake. I can't fathom how one can profess love and later use a blunt dagger to split your sky open, watch the stars tumble burgundy like rose petals, pluck your moon and offer it to the night forever. I curse him on days when light neither enters nor leaves this sickened sanctuary and I have to breakthrough this blanket of thistles and thorns leaving me marred. I hate him for leaving me alone in the dark, making me a lachrymose woman, a changeling in this society thus far. I pray karma would smite all his candles dark so he knows what it feels like.
As I make a bed of the shore sands, the sea within sings to me as if to cease the fire lit on his fathers memory, more tears wash over the anger. I realize and smile, all the tears watered crevices cradling seeds of forgiveness. The waters break & my seaman washes ashore, holds me in his gaze, astronomers revelations in his eyes like his father. He is a letter of sorts, the entelechy of his fathers frailty, he is dawn, promising new things. As I hold his gaze, l stare at his father.
I imagine him in lands faraway, pray his shoulders tire of playing Hercules to his ego and know that flaws are the night that give stars shine. I pity him, "to God whom the lines on the palm of thine hands are the paths the sun treads upon, grant me my hearts desire to hold both my men in my hands before the pendulums tire."
He keeps looking over his shoulder, figments imagined. His demons rise with the setting sun to sun the night. Rattled leaves startle guilty souls, eyes foe night shadows that seek only sleep. A man cannot out run himself. So as he yields, he makes kin of his demons. The smoke trailing into the darkness become phantoms of truth remonstrating his run away slave strides, lament on behalf of mother & child abandoned. Chagrined, the hooting owls startle him to remind him, "what you judge, you become." How bright the darkness can be, not even the darkness could afford him the solitude he so needed.
The night says to him "the father you judged, you have become."
Sits were the night is lit and cuts out memory of her: the rib that ought to sanctum in his bosom, curses his bruised feet for longing home and smooth floors. Dragging his heart he sort paths abandoned, forgotten to God: in the cool of melancholy where the mantis don't pray. All that rampage, trail of broken hearts like a Benghazi street, he could hear the conscience hounds picking up on his scent.
Prayer escapes broken hearts like smoke trails to the hallways of heaven: the luster of night stars play search lights that seek a fugitive with sins to answer for.
They won't take me alive, on a bed of stone miasma blanket, tonight I sleep my last. Night will be grave enough, sinners have no epitaphs, my sins will be the headstone should Christ come looking.
Life slipping away, visceral anguish he imagines this is hades. She comes to him in the delirium of death like an angel, cuddling a cherub in her hands. Reaches for him and places a soft kiss on his lips and whispers "I forgive you."
He gasps violently filling his lungs with cold air jolting him to life as if the tears flowing down his cheek's were drowning him. A choke and a gasp, macabre uncoils her prey and looks on clad in ire feeling cheated.
She's not there but her presence lingers on sun. He imagines if God had a face it would be hers, forgiving. He gets up visceral anguish reminding him all things easy have consequences, follows the trail of broken aortas to her and the little seaman just off the amniotic tides.
It is wisdom that knows victory of a swung sword not only a won war.
¬nashe chokureva.