The Savannah

*possible trigger warning for suicide*

I saw dead birds. Dead birds everywhere.

You see, the playground stretched far and wide in my young mind. It was a burning savannah , and a stampede thundered through the wood chips beneath my shoes. The roaring, the stomping. It felt electric, like a vibration which scorched my skin and stung my ear drums. While the lions and the elephants ran past, I stood with my hands over my ears. And I cried. ‘Eyes shut tight’, my mom told me. ‘Sometimes the darkness is better than the light.”

Sometimes the darkness is better than the light.

I ran. Like a gazelle from a lion, I ran. At the base of an oak tree my feet stopped. Sudden, kicking up dirt. But, the sun still looked on; I could feel her presence on the back of my t-shirt. My toes dipped into a gelatinous pile of blood. It smeared on my nails like polish. Small, bony legs stuck out from the blue-feathered pile. Feral. A gazelle was like a bird in a way, I suppose. Prey, or something of the sort. Gazelle’s don’t eat birds. Lions do, though. That must have been what happened to that bird, I thought. The lions.

On my bed, there was a cotton quilt that felt like rug-burn if you moved the wrong way. I sat, with the lights off, on top of it. Crossed my legs, uncrossed them, crossed them again. Little lions danced around me where the fabric met my skin. It was harsh, abrasive even. But the dark- it hugged me. The vibrations of stamping elephant legs were gone now and my ears felt swollen from the noise. Sun wasn’t pushing at my back while I was inside like this. God, I hated that. The way the sun made gravity feel heavier than it was.The sun wasn’t a soft hand on my shoulder on a hot day; she was a firm slap that left her handprint behind. She made the air angry with her density and unforgivingness. She dried up the bodies of little dead birds and rewarded the lions with sun baths in the sand.

Eventually, I got up from the quilt. The lions walked away, swaying their golden bodies with ease. Rain sounded on my window as I stood there. It was like an icepack on my bruised eardrums and blistered skin. The sound washed over me as the rain pooled into the storm drains.  To be there, I thought. In the storm drains. It would be so dark, and so quiet. Away from the savannah at last.

Although my fingers could hardly reach, I pushed open the window. Just a bit. With my eyes closed tight, I stuck my head outside. The raindrops soaked my hair and my face. Raindrops; they go right through the fur of a gazelle and dye it a darker, deeper shade of brown. Almost as if it's a different animal entirely. As the collar of my pajama shirt became saturated with the drops, I imagined that storm drain. A bird chirped somewhere, and I remembered the dead one from the playground. ‘If I’m in the storm drain’, I decided, ‘then you are too.’ Somewhere behind my eyelids I saw a blue bird, not dried up or eaten by lions, dancing in the rain with a gazelle. They both agree, I thought, that the darkness is sometimes better than the light.

When my mom asked me, a few days later, if I wanted to go to the park again, I said no. Certainly not.

“Why not?” She asked me.

The sun peeked through the kitchen door and I scooted my chair away from it. 

“‘Cause of the sun.”

I told her how it hit me and beat down on the savannah. How it stung my skin and made the air angry.

“I think I’m ‘llergic to it, ‘cause Sam’s ‘llergic to peanuts and they hurt her like that.” I remember staring up at her. Her head was tilted and I could see the dried-up bluebird in her eyes. Mom always had a bit of dried-up bluebird in her eyes like that.

Maybe Mom had lions too. Ones that circled her when she watched her 6 year old daughter say she was scared of going outside. Or maybe they swam in her sunken pupils, just like her bluebirds did.

After I stopped my voyages out into the savannah, its horizons only seemed to widen. They crept in through the windows, underneath the doors. It wanted me. It had an urge to swallow me whole and feed my flesh to it’s creatures. I trembled in its wake. When the sun fixed her beedy eyes on me I hid. Sometimes I would sink myself into the porcelain bathtub with the shower curtain drawn shut, watching the silhouettes of lions weaving on the other side of it.

If, at times, it was necessary, I would don a disguise in order to cross the dry, sandy paths of the savannah. I’d wear a sun hat, gloves, long sleeves, pants, sunglasses- in order to avoid the red grasp of the sun. Tiny lions danced among the hairs on my arms when I was in my attire, but that didn’t matter- as long as I stayed away from her vicious grasp. Eyes on the floor, I’d trail behind my mother’s feet at the supermarket, or Sam’s soccer games. Sometimes the journeys were successful. Other times, my hands grew accustomed to their spot over my ears, where they did their job at keeping away the bruising sounds of the stampeding animals. I cried alot in the savannah.

In the corner of my room, I counted my fingers. And my toes. And my fingers again. You see, I used to count the lions, but there were far too many as I sat there, looking out over a sea of golden fur. They showed their teeth. I didn’t show mine back. The low, rumbling growl tossed my head back and forth between my bedroom walls for hours. I hugged my knees to my chest and prayed. Not to God, or Allah. But to the Sun.

“Please leave me alone,” I wept, “Please.”

The words may not have even escaped my mouth. I became deaf amidst an ocean of thundering lions. The darkness was always, I thought to myself, better than the light. 

Although I could not see it, I knew there was dried-up bluebird in my eyes. I could feel it welling up inside, like an infection, or a tumor. I wished to be in that storm drain. No lions would ever find me there. And so I waited. And I waited.

I waited until the first rays of sunshine came creeping through my curtains. Until her unforgiving hands had rested on my shoulders- burning hot. It was only then that I rose from my hiding place. My body felt heavier than it was- that was her doing, the sun. She made me feel that way.

My feet dragged like chains as I made my way to the front door. When I reached it, I sighed. A heavy sigh-a gust of wind through a gazelle’s fur. I turned to the coat hooks. My hat and my gloves and my sunglasses looked lonely.

I gazed at the world beyond the threshold. The savannah was ugly and treacherous. My cheeks were damp, but not bitter. A watering hole for all of a savannah to drink from. The storm drain was patient behind my eyelids.

And so, I took a step.

Somewhere, you see, the dried-up, dead bluebird is no longer alone. There's the shriveled up body of a gazelle lying beside it. The lions will feast at last.