The Dance

I have a dress the same color as angels flapping their feathery wings. One yesterday, I slid myself into it and watched as it became my skin. I was too white the sun shied away and never shone when I was there. But if you looked too closely, you would see the devil woven into my fabric.

  I twirl in the sand. Eve and Lilith, like the ebb and tide, unravel my labyrinthine heart , then rise and fall into it. I am fading into a mirage. Have I ever been real?

   The words frantically dance as they tear my brain apart. The shreds fall out of the window. I jump to collect them and I am all broken. I glue my body together  and search for them. I press myself into a insanity and it pushes me into ecstasy and they both throw me, on the shores of nothingness. I remember. My brain. I lost it somewhere along the way. The shreds repulse and break my skull. Craziness is inevitable.

Become me again and I’ll pretend nothing ever happened. 

The Stranger

The clouds were drenched with degrees of grey; the moon with cold silver, all were scattered across a black sky. Silence echoed everywhere, them, in the inscrutable horizon of ethereal figures, could hear it. Behind the closed windows, life lay.

   A pair of varnished shoes trod the ground. Wearing them, a man wrapped in a black coat the same texture as night.

   She looked like ice before melting. Her lips were painted in cheap red, her eyes in blue. Her body was easily traceable in the clothes she wore. She was old, and yet, young. Sitting beside her, was a bald man in his late fifties struggling to keep his eyelids open enough to make a person think he is alert.  The air in the bar was stale, was heavy.

    “They call us cheap,” her lips parted to say. “They call us cheap those women in fancy clothes.”

  “Yeah,” the bald man answered while resting his head on the table. He took another gulp of the beer.

    “They, those women I mean, got everything and are happy with it and we got nothing and are happy with it. Why won’t they just leave us alone? They and their stupid pride! I hate them.”

   The door of the bar opened. A man in varnished shoes and a black coat entered. There were only two people in the bar beside himself.

   “Aren’t we gonnaــ” the bald man halted, searching for air. “go?” he finally said.

  “No, not know. I mean, I dunno what else I’d like to be if I wasn’t here,” she continued.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear that. I wanna go.”

     The man in black coat caught sight of the woman. He looked intently at her, confusion coloring his features.

   “I saidــ,”she trailed off, “Oh just forget about it. You know, I wouldn’t like to have their lives. I knew someone many years ago I can hardly remember her anymore.  She  had it and she just didn’t want it. It was all too heavy, owning everything and losing yourself in between… that’s what she said.”  She saw a man in black coat, his eyes fixed on her. She was used to men looking at her. She tilted her head the other way.

   “Did you say we are gonna go now?” the bald man asked, breathing heavily between the words.

    “No. No, I didn’t say that. That woman, she reminded me of something, we are all suffering. We ,all of us, are the same. Running away is sometimes inevitable for you to believe it” She looked at the bald man, caring for nothing more than the cup of beer he clutched. She smiled. Bitterly.  “And why am I telling all of this to you?  These are not secrets. I guess confessions also count even when the person you are talking to won’t understand a thing. So now, I am making confessions, that’s what I’m doing.” She laughed, a sick laugh, chocking on tears. Her eyes then fell on the man in black coat. He was still looking at her. She let her eyes search his face and was swept by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

   The man in black coat saw that the woman was too looking at him. He took that chance and advanced towards her.

   The woman saw the man coming her way. She looked away nervously. He lifted her face in his hands and bent to have a closer look at it. It felt like oxygen had totally escaped the bar. He let go of her face in embarrassment.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “ you look a lot like someone I used to know…but you couldn’t be her.”

   He turned away heading for the door, the weight of disappointment obvious in the way his shoulders hunched.

   “But what if I am her?” the woman abruptly said, resting her head on one hand in a reckless manner. Challenge colored her tone

   The man stopped. “No,” he murmured as though to himself, “ You are  not her. Nothing can ever happen to change someone so much.”

      “You are quite wrong,” her face went very stern, “Life happens.” She let out another sick laugh.

     He looked at the woman in front of him and forced his memory to recollect shreds of what she looked like. There was a great similarity between the two faces but, no, she couldn’t be her. She, who owned everything could never one day be so cheap. He went away, the thudding of his varnished shoes no longer to be heard.

    She looked at the man, tracing his every step to the door. And when the door was slammed, she watched as he slowly faded into an ethereal silhouette of black in the horizon.Her eyes could no longer see him, and out of them, tears were spilled

Impure

  “Excuse me,” a little girl said from behind her, “I want to pass.”

    It was that inescapable feeling again sweeping over her. It was that sense of long lost  innocence brought by the wideness of those girl’s eyes. The distant past of laughter and ignorance pressed like a hidden wound. And now that she was  impure, it all seemed so far away.

    “Of course,” she said with a smile that poured bitterness into her face.

    She pushed her way through people and the humid molecules of air. Her voice of thought was an imperceptible susurrus transgressing against the noises in the street. Sometimes, it would be silenced altogether. She’d hold her breath and pray she didn’t forget it somewhere in the crowds.

    After getting lost within the grey concretes of streets for many hours, she bought the cigarettes and headed back home.

   “What took you so long?” her mother said, “ Do you even realize what could happen if your dad came and realized you were not home yet?!”

 She passed her mother without a glance wearing her mask of indifference.

   “And can you imagine what the neighbors may be saying right now,” she went on, “ ‘She can’t raise her daughter’, ‘Her daughter enters the house by herself at 9 PM’,” The mother so perfectly mimicked  those woman looking through the cracks of every door and whispering to each other in that wicked voice what they  saw. Perhaps it came out so well  because she was one of them.

   She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her mother fiercely flung it open. “I’m not done yet,” she said hoarsely.

   “In half an hour, I want you dressed. Your aunt called and said she found a suitor for you. Now don’t you dare drive him away like you always do.”

    She opened her bag and got out a cigarette. When her mother wasn’t looking, she lit it and put it between her lips.

 Everything fell into an ominous silence. That silence before the storm.

   “Oh dear! I can’t believe my eyes. Oh dear..Oh dear! What have I done God to deserve such a thing for a daughter. Oh dear!” and then she shouted, “Throw that thing away!”

  She now looked her mother’s way, with a cloud of smoke surrounding her. “But you can’t make me do it. Now, I became addicted and if I try to stop, I’ll look so bad nobody will want to marry me.” Her voice was ever so calm and to further infuriate her mother, she said that smiling.

   “I said throw this thing away!”

   “You are mad because now you can’t control me. You are mad because I am not saying yes to whatever you say. Admit it,  you never loved me. Dad never loved me. You all wanted to have a boy. Why didn’t you just kill me when I was born instead of torturing me like that?”

   “I said throw this thing away!”

     “You just want to get rid of me. Every breath that comes out of me is a shame. I am a walking shame. You bring all kind of ugly men and have me sitting at one side of the room dressed like a pretty doll while deciding who you will sell me to. But you see, I am not going to get dressed tonight, because I don’t want to get married.”

    She looked around to find herself thrown on the ground, droplets of blood coming out of her cheek. Her mother had slapped her.

   Her mother stood panting and when she was able to regulate her breath, said, “You will get dressed and one day or another, you will get married. You are a  woman. That’s what women do.” She heard the door being shut.

   Minutes, long minutes lasted with her lying on the ground. Everything pressured her down she couldn’t find the strength to stand up. The world was tumbling down around her. She was not good anymore. She was not innocent anymore. Everybody looked at her that way. Long ago, she had taken off the dress of  purity to stand naked in the wind. Everybody wanted to cover her up because she was the incarnation of their hidden desires. She always looked proud in her nudity. But her mother said that women’s job in life is to get married and obey their husbands. The bitterness aroused in her soul. She couldn’t bear the weight of her breasts, the weight of her body, the weight of being a woman. She couldn’t escape what she is, She couldn’t burry it so that nobody would see it. She was their walking shame. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she saw how anger twisted her face giving it such an evil look. So many times, she had stood up confessing her impurity to herself and was happy with it. So many times all she wanted out of life was not virtue but freedom. Now, her nakedness looked so painful. Now, she was faced with the realization she always wriggled. She is a woman. Women get married. That’s what women do. In that, she found a way to be good again. She stood up and started getting dressed.

55-The Cage

Fidgeting between

Discordant tones

Lashing me             

With expectations

To be something

And I envy the space

For its inexistence

And I push a thumb

Into my ear

I can’t hear

But that doesn’t make me deaf

I peel the pictures

Off my memory

Incinerated

Before me

Light light

Flying

Within the bars of the cage

Check Out G-Man 

Clouds ـــ An Allegory

Her fingers clutched the iron chains tightly  making the blue color of veins appear prominently behind her flushed skin. She took three steps backward, thrust her feet in the ground and then, let goes. Gusts of air hit her in the face making strands of  her chestnut hair fly everywhere. A tiny giggle escaped her mouth. Ellie looked at her mother standing with hands crossed and a smile of satisfaction on her lips, waved, then prepared for another round on the swing.

   The sun was blazing. Ellie cherished a belief that they had been there for long and ought to be going away soon, so even s weariness started clambering up her bones and the movements of the swing felt rhythmic the  thrill they used to give was gone, she still insisted on sitting there and doing it over again. There was nothing else to do.

   This time, the swing went far too high. Fear took over Ellie that she would fall and hurt her legs causing her mother to shout at her. When the swing started  slowing down though, she decided to repeat it again. Every time, she saw the sky hanging up there with dispersed clouds  and her feet only inches away from touching them, a longing burnt in her heart . She kept on trying but encountered nothing except failure. She then came to the decision, if she couldn’t touch the clouds, she would follow them to where they go.

   Even though the place was clamorous , Ellie tiptoed until she was a bit far from the swing; she’d seen it done in a cartoon before.  Her mother was engrossed in talking with a friend and wouldn’t notice her absence. Ellie had thought of asking her permission but was sure of rejection, yet now, discerning her face that looked so kind, she considered going back to the swing. She was torn between what she wanted and what she had to do. Ambivalence seized her from pursuing the clouds instilling doubts in her heart of whether it was the right thing to do. And yet, she didn’t know why it would be wrong; it would provoke her mother, she was sure, and that was always simply enough to detain her from doing it. But then she thought, her mother never said to her, “Don’t leave the swing.” And never said, “Don’t follow the clouds .” So maybe after all she would be okay with it. That put Ellie a bit at ease and made her resolved on doing what she wanted.

    Her eyes wandered off to the sky, and between a cluster of clouds, she chose one to follow with ravenous desire to know that surfaced a feeling of guilt twinging every now and then.

   The entire of her head was directed to the sky. She had been looking at her cloud for so long she could describe every little detail of it if asked. It was as though she dissolved in it and abandoned every other thing that was not it. Her legs had grown weary of walking long ago but stopping was not a thing she considered, her desire moved her further then her body would.  Within her mind, she drew the world of that cloud came from and a smile broke upon her lips whenever she imagined she would be there soon. For now, time was forgotten, tiredness was forgotten and her mother was forgotten. She no longer looked at the road ahead of her, just at the sky; but a rock in the way, brought her down to the ground again.

    She had fallen and injured her knees. The sight of blood oozing out of it and the sudden pain horrified her. Maybe that was the reason her mother, as she was certain, wouldn’t approve of her following a cloud. Maybe she should have just sat on the swing. Guilt overtook everything, until her eyes looked up again to see that the cloud was slipping away. With all her strength, she stood up and continued walking. Moments later, she was forced to stop; her mother came.

    The wrath in her mother’s eyes made Ellie cringe. The moment she was close enough to her, she started shouting.

    “What the hell were you doing in here? Do you know how worried I was?”

    “Sorry,” she said, her voice shaking.

    “Now tell me, what made you leave the swing and go here? And Oh. My. God. Look at what happened to your knee!”

    “I wanted to know where clouds go so I was following one.”

      “You followed what! You are a clever girl Ellie, and clever girls don’t stay such stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere.”

       With these words, her mother shattered her fancies into small pieces that hurt more than anything Ellie had felt before. Through a curtain of tears she said, “They do! You told me that everything goes somewhere.”

     “Now you come with me. It’s time to go home.”

       Her mother carried Ellie in her arms. One last time, her eyes wandered off to the sky. Her cloud was not there. It abandoned her. Clouds are cruel things. Clouds mislead you and make you fall and hurt yourself. Clouds make your mother mad at you. Clouds make you do stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere. The tiredness was now overwhelming. She closed her eyes and slept. Deeply. 

I have been having many thoughts concerning certain stuff and thought that using this allegorical form to portray them would be the most adequate thing. Every character, thing and event in here stands for something. I'll be posting a detailed explanation later, but first, I am asking you to kindly tell me your own version of interpretation. 

Pendulum

Wise man sits on the top of a tower

Saying tears turn to pearls

Mine came crashing at my feet

And now I’m bleeding

Evil and good

Wrestled tonight on my threshold

I locked the door

Sank under the quilts and pretended

I was deaf

Politicians and Presidents

Movies and celebrities

Jewels and glitter

I just squeeze myself between the cracks

Hanging photos on dusty walls

A girl who wore pink dreams

Torn at the edges

Last seen

Two years ago

I tiptoe so I wouldn’t’ disturb

Extremes fighting within me

On my way to the candy shop

Just around the corner

Of yesterday

At the end

I am only a sack of

Twisted nerves  

The Way Back Home

At the age of eight, there were many things I had yet to learn: Earth is the third planet away from the Sun; salt consists of sodium and chlorine; wrong things  aren’t always wrong; happy endings are of stories that haven’t ended.

 Language was not one of them.

    A heavy cover of fog shrouded the place. When I was young, I had a childish notion that fogs are made when a giant sighs. So in my head, I saw a giant man resting his head against a tree and sighing. He was tired. Giants couldn’t be tired, a voice of thought interrupted. But that was something I couldn’t make sense of. Some way or another , everybody had to be tired. When dad came back home he was tired.  When he hit mom she was tired. And when they told me we would move to another country, I was tired.  

  In the fog,  I could see a faint trail of how every road began, but the ends were still something of an enigma to me. Everybody headed somewhere, that was the only thing I knew. I then looked at mom. Though she was only thirty-two by then, the skin around her eyes sagged. She cried a lot. I thought that tears drag your skin down with them; that’s why I never cried. It was years later, when my skin sagged just like hers, that I learnt, to cry, you don’t really have to shed tears.

   She waved goodbye and started to fade away in the fog. I felt a tingling feeling in my stomach that rose up to my chest adding to every breath a chill. I dragged my legs and entered the school.

   I was at a loss. It seemed to me that the fog was only in my eyes to blind me. I feared that I would stumble if I walked any further. After long minutes that felt like forever,  I summoned my power and asked about my class.

  When I entered, they had already begun. I had a petite figure, so when the teacher didn’t ask me about my name, I just thought she didn’t see me. I noticed how when she shouted, a nerve in her neck shook in a funny way. So I laughed. She then heard me.

 “What are you laughing at?” she said.

  Shivering, I answered, “Nothing.”

“Well then, I want you to write ‘People who laugh at nothing are stupid’ and bring it to my desk tomorrow”

  When the break came, I asked where the roof was and ran all the way up there. I felt mortified and didn’t want anyone to see me.

   I could see the ocean from there. Out of my pockets, I got out a small map and unfolded it. Back home, my friend told me we’d only have the Mediterranean  in our way. I asked how I would cross it. She smiled and said, “You just swim.”
  My eyes fell on the river. Back then when I used to stroll by its side, it'd looked so vast. But now, it ran down the map like a scar. 

 “Hey,” a voice came from beside me.

I didn’t answer.

“You know why Mrs. Peanut Head shouted at you?”

I then looked over my shoulder to find a boy my age. I understood who he was talking about and was interested to hear his explanation.

He sighed and said, “Will you just look at your hair,” he then held it in his hands, “She’s jealous of it.”

I was truly puzzled and had to ask him, “Why would that happen? Her hair is quite good”

“Finally, you’ve talked!” he sighed, “When Mrs. Peanut Head was a young girl, she went to the zoo and stood beside the monkey cage. They all thought she was a huge peanut and wanted to eat her. By the time the security came, all her hair was chewed. What you see is a wig.”

I knew that was intended as a joke, still, to imagine the whole scene in my head, I couldn’t help laughing.

He stretched his hand and smiled. “Mark",  he said.

I stood up and shook hands with him. “Cecil,” I answered.

  Looking at his face, I learnt my first lesson in language; that language hardly spoken by the lips. Beyond every word, there’s always a thousand word that translate according to the listener. So there is not one language, there’s a million that may share the same words.  And those that are never spoken, are the most powerful.

  I wished I could tell mom before she packed her clothes telling me she was going home, and dad when he didn’t come from work and people told me that his soul went home, what I heard in Mark’s smile that day. It whispered to me, “Home is not that far away.”

10th DoM