The diaspora within

  

I promised I'd write today - and here I'm. Dripping melancholy from rejuvenating veins. A quiet, austere knowing in my bones, in my breath. New understandings have arisen from shedding skin, sweat, and invisible blood. 

One moment I'm rushing to the A train, wind whistling in my hair, music blaring in my ears. I walk past the doggy day care center, I used to work here. I love Chase, and little Izzy. They see me through the window and make a commotion that would drive wolves away, and I smile. I walk ahead and see the farmer's market, and enjoy a blueberry pie, freshly baked ; one I usually devoured in a single sitting. Lovers and families graze around the place and each other on a warm summer's day. Winter was brutal, but watching legs that don't end in shorts that blind the bare eye is almost worth it. A bakery at the end of the street is lit up for no real reason save the regality of lavishness sparking the passerby's eye. The crisp air weaves a tapestry of laughter by the river, where the groomed dogs run to their masters. I often watched in glee, like it was the colloseum. Dogs that have hair like gold, and smell like a meadow. 

The next moment, I'm a few tectonic plates away. I'm atop a water tank, as my father peeps his head in curious concern fi I made it up. I move the valve so the two drums are connected, after we had the water cleaned. My skin had been blistering and my hair cob-webbing in the month  I had arrived to tropical thunder- land, and I insisted on having the tank cleaned, overdue since last year. I discover from the cleaning man, that there were white insects in the tank that dove to our taps in rooms below. I also discover that I could never talk about cheese or pizza in this home without a wince, it's a tabboo. My body craved bread after a month, and I had no kitchen for my aching hand. My father lived downstairs, in clutter that can only be described as the finale of Garbage waterloo . My mother lives on the floor above me, where my old room has now been converted to a home, with a kitchen she made by the  3 foot hallway outside of it. My heart bleeds when I see this. My parents have been separated for a long time, not amicably to say the least. 

I don't know if I'm suffering, it's hard to tell. It's a testimony of human endurance that we die several many times in our lives and continue, shells hardened or broken. It's impossible to imagine the world I came from, nor is it explicable in words, not to anybody here. I suppose this is the quintessential culture shock, but it's also, in my case, a new existential shock as I struggle to come to terms with a new reality. One my body screams silently about, tearing at it as if to undress it off me; like I could jump out of it if I tore hard enough. I'm saved only by the envelop of love surrounding me, and that quite literally, sandwich me in my floor. It's the  closest to bread I've had in a month. 

I meander. What I started out to make a few sentences has ripened indelibly, and my point really is this - I'm no stranger to life stripping me of identities, often to know I emerge with new upgrades. When endurance is pushed to the brink of your being, a quietness settles in your breath. It is with the pulse of this breath that I write this, not sad, not happy. In a liminal world devoid of emotion as we know, and tonight, I ask no questions. 

Last night's dream was revealing. A celebrity I know was tricked by humans to enter a cage for food, and while he was in there, he was eaten by cheetahs. Cheetahs that pronged him with lethal spines. What survived was the baby. Our interpretation of this is interesting. Validation, success, specious relationships that seemed innocent. Innocence, all that survives. 

In a quiet corner, a layer of an onion comes undone, with quiet tears to resonate.