(Fluidity motivated by the situation I see, and already know)
Escaping from home, the place where it happened, where they made you black and blue on the inside, not to mention torn and dark on the outside, where your heart stopped beating and then, for that moment, you were happy. Where depression sank you deeper and deeper, like into that mud puddle and you know you will be stuck and comfortably numb if in a few moments you just waited it out. Where pulling yourself out or up or through by your bootstraps isn’t an option because they, he, them, took that away too when they came and took everything away. When land confiscation and government-sanctioned kidnappings became places on the map of your soul where you can pinpoint that place in time, that nick on your body, that scar, the night when he came across the bed, the eyelids, that warmth, that comfort of recognition. How can my own people, my own government, my own family do this to me? That recognition, confusion, love washes away away away down the hill across the border that night when you pack everything out of horror and you cry because the landslide hit and your family doesn’t matter anymore because they are all the same, the same people that hurt you, that hit you, that took your land and your country and your vote and your virginity they are all the same. The threshold, the border, the crossing, the backpacks, and schoolbooks, the looks and the phone calls, looking back will always to you be sign that you are going forward because nostalgia is not a disease anymore to you, but rather that disgusting third eye that grew on top of your head and can see everything.
You move en masse, you go by yourself, across the world, across the border, a few kilometers away, plane ride after plane ride ripping your hair out hoping chunks of your brain come with it, chunks of your memory come flying out and splatter across the windshield to be sucked away by the pouring rain…floods (like that one time, in that one place, only the water ran red when no one was looking but me and I never said anything). You rip and pull and bang your head against the window seat plate glass, against the pick-up truck window, against your friend, against your backpack, trying to have them leave you. But they are stuck, like his, their, your hands were. Stuck in places you will never forget but try to hide and keep dry for the rest of your life. Stuck in places that only come out of your body in water form when you cry or when you swim and you think no one watches you, stuck in places that only become unfolded in your new job or at night in those places that you would think he, or them, would already know about because he, or them, put them there and he, or them, could hear you letting go of reality when it hit, when it hit like a monsoon. But he and them never stop, even after you leave the land is still confiscated and they still hurt the things you love the most and your home, however tarnished and ruined it is because of those memories is still STILL the only ONLY place you want to go back to, to shed everything and be open to the plague, the mosquitoes and the flies that have now taken over, the soldiers and the earless families who now call it their home because after you left they saw that they couldn’t listen and their hearts took flight to somewhere only he, or them, knows about. Your mouth opens wide to scream about it and you can’t seem to remember whose blood you have on your hands or what border you crossed or what is now happening in that place that everyone else calls your home and that you still, in that childish place in your heart, want to go back to. And as you scream you hear someone else’s teeth fall out of their mouth and look behind you to see thousands upon thousands of people just like you, who look like you and have mouths and bodies and souls like you and are standing next to you looking at the fire pit that was also once their home. They are screaming with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment