MOST NIGHTS

MOST NIGHTS

 LISTEN

                                               Listen. That is how I spend my nights, I listen. I lay in my bed, the empty side of my bed, still, almost lifeless as I listen to the silent darkness engulf the night  and I listen to the silence, to the crying toddlers loosely strapped to their mothers’ backs, to the hurrying feet of troubled men beating the cracking grounds, to the whimpering of little kids clinging to their mothers’ chests and arms, and the gunshots, piercing through the air in loud bangs and soon start to decay as they rid my mother’s soil of her lustre and fertility, I listen to the tree branch creak as the owl perches on it, I listen to the hoot, a long chilling hoot and I listen to the “silence” fade back into the night. I listen to the whooshing of the night air breathe into my pores, filling me with its almost unholy air, as I am floating away to my utopia- a void stretching far and wide, no colours, no life, just empty walls laced with distinct hollowness. Halfway through, I can feel the night trussing a thin rope around my neck, trapping his air in my body, suffocating, I fall  back on my bed, heaving and numb as the night sinks me back into my bed and its worn out springs receive me with metal noises and I am now wide awake, distraught and shaken.

 WATCH

                         I watch. I watch in captured silence as he makes his way across the room, eyes blank, dark, emotionless. I watch his eyes glitter with soft tears and I watch him blink them back. He is almost like the night, silent with his shadow looming over like the dark night sky but you could see his eyes glitter with something different, softer, remorse maybe. I watch him bend over, then on his knees, his weight shifting uncomfortably, “seeking refuge”, he calls it. I watch him stand up, slowly, slumped as he makes for the door and I watch his shadow become one with the night. I watch them arrive on tiny wings, fear and carnage and paralysis, all the better to rest on my skin, they fly at night so I drag myself to mother’s rocky armchair and I watch him stare intently at the giant tree ,   maybe it’s tonight, my heart almost skips its beat so I look away, at the night instead, I watch the night’s eyes glitter with stars, and I focus on their little light, my mind counting and counting again and again.

WAIT

                       I do not breathe in, I can feel the choking smell of gunpowder smoke tickling my nose hairs mixed with raw taste  of metal on my tongue, travelling down my mouth to settle in my throat so I hold my breath and wait. I wait for the blood in my legs to pool, I wait till my weight falls and my bones support me like weak branches, I wait till my knees clank together like loosely held keys. I wait for the lump behind my throat to form, little by little, as the darkness in the night’s eyes fade away, I wait for the cock’s cry  and the red spots in the sky, I wait for the leaves to wake up and dry off their tears, I wait for the thump, thump, thump of my heart beating against my chest, I wait for the little creak of the kitchen door to dissolve the lump in my throat, I wait for the conflicted thoughts to well in my eyes, to see them drop in every glass tear, I wait for his sigh, his declaration to want to live another day, I wait for the sobs, my declaration of relief, I did not have to rush down to cut him down from the tree, half dead, trying to take his own life, I did not have to watch women carted away or men shot to death. So I wait some more, for the morning wind to rustle the leaves and carry the earth’s smell so I breathe again. I wait for the sun to carry the fear and carnage and paralysis and my tears away on its little wings as I dip my restless head in the little glow of sunlight peeping through my window. I wait for hope as I shut my eyes to sleep. Her light touches dying leaves too, I am still waiting to feel more like the light and less like the dying leaves.

Helen stared at the page. The black words were in English, so she must have been learned. The hands that gripped the pen must have been a girl, a teenager maybe, only a teenager could retain so much emotion on paper. Her loopy handwriting wove a letter into another and Helen knew almost   immediately that her fingers must have been long, that her fingernails must be short from her biting on them, anxiety, she thought, she imagined the girl wrapping her fingers around the tip of the pen, weaving each word with so much care, like telling your story to someone you know. Helen looked more closely at the letters, they were round and they stood more or less upright and stood smartly across the page, not in a hurry, but were a little bit crowded at the edges, as if she was trying to save space,   but there was still space left ,  Helen wondered why she tried to save space, did she not finish writing?, did she get hurt, the gunshots? , or did she just run out of words? Helen often ran out of words, she’d picture this whole scenario and halfway through getting it on paper, she’d hang, like the girl, running out of air. The sentences were very distinct, as if she wrote them as they came to her mind, in a way, they didn’t bind, each one different from the other. Helen could almost picture her, tired, bloodshot eyes, hoping “him”, her father most likely ,  doesn’t hang himself.  Helen wondered what time she ever got to write if she was awake all night, maybe somewhere in between, she thought, that’s what reading the teenage girl’s  paper felt like, somewhere in between, as if it had no beginning or ending. “She was probably from a place fighting insurgency”, she thought. Helen liked the day too ,  she liked the noise and the presence. She almost felt like she had everything back, each morning, walking into the sun.