I looked up to where Leila was standing. As each second passed, she drifted away from me even more. The vivid picture I had of her was dissolving. My memories of her were growing indistinct. I continued to stare at her blurred image until she slowly disappeared from my sight. My caged emotions released into the open air and Leila was gone for good. I felt a sense of relief now. Papa was standing above me. I looked up at him. “Papa, it’s not your fault.” I closed my eyes. Now I could move on.
Disturbances February 5, 2012
It broke into a million little pieces. I stood there frozen, but not shocked by my own audacity. He turned around. The fierceness in his eyes pierced my throat. Slowly, they softened, laughter stretched out from within his rotund belly.
“Now why would you do that?” he asked, scratching his forehead. “Throwing things at me isn’t going to solve a thing.”
He walked into the kitchen and asked Julia to clean up the mess before he left the house. She was used to the shattering sounds. Once a week at least, she would scurry into the small room to pull out the ufagio. Even though there was dustpan, she insisted on using one of the newspapers piled up on the dining room table.
I lay down on the sofa and flipped through the channels, but gave up. Rolling over onto my stomach, I stared out the window at the garden. I could barely see beyond the bars that kept us away from the world outside, I laughed. She had washed the curtains in the living room and hung them up after they had dried. One was longer than the other. I studied them from top to bottom and realized that she had put two different curtains up. I walked into the spare bedroom and in fact, she had.
I crawled back onto the sofa. Too many pictures filled my head and I couldn’t bear to think anymore. My head hurt from the ridiculous thoughts that encircled my brain. I wished they would stop. The voices inside my head had begun again and I wanted them to go away. The last time this happened, I woke up with a bloody knife in my hand.
Sleep. Blank slate. Shutdown. I must have drifted off. I woke up several hours later, my hands were red. I thought I had gotten rid of that damn knife.
Bookworm January 25, 2012
Excerpt from one of my short stories (WIP)
“Look at all the baby books Michael. I have so much more reading to do. I’m going to be a mom soon!” And with those words, Sonali gently pat her hollow stomach and looked up at Michael with her wide, gleaming eyes. She clutched the book against her chest and for the first time in months, she smiled with immense pleasure.
Michael looked at her with great sadness. He felt a tear roll down the right side of his face. All this time he had thought that the books were helping her to move on. Instead, that evening he realized that what he had really bought her all these months, was her own insanity.
The Sound of Music and the Taste of Yummy January 23, 2012
And all of a sudden in the middle of her sentence, she paused.
‘Did you hear that,’ she asked?
‘Hear what?’ The only sounds I could hear were the birds off in the distance, chirping a fine tune. And before I could respond any further, she stood up and began to dance. And then I felt it. The music surrounded us – a big bellied man on a piano, a purple woman playing the banjo, several little people with Litungus and Maracas shaking everywhere.
She danced the Samba and shook like the Basoga people, bringing unity in all the sounds that radiated around us. I was mesmerized and in a state of disbelief. I rubbed my eyes and once they opened, I saw elephants dressed in colourful clothes, swaying to the music. Koalas in caps and Macaques wearing bells.
A merry-go-round, full of little things with pumpkin heads, went round and round at a speed faster than my eyes could keep up with. Ice cream cones were floating in the sky and cotton candy swirled around the imaginary stars. She reached out for some and let it melt away in her mouth, until her lips were rosy red, like the colour of…could it be? Yes, on an ice stand stood a 20 layered red velvet cake, covered with cream cheese frosting that looked like fluffy clouds galore. She dove into it, and gobbled each layer, one by one.
The initial shock had surpassed. I took to my feet and swayed through the blue grass, flying over the multi coloured eggs and somersaulting in the air, like no acrobat had before. She took my hand and we jumped into the green sea, so soft and squishy. We danced to the madness and sang at the top of our lungs. I was ecstatic, like a child at a fair. Yes, this was my fair.
I turned around and looked at her, ‘Thank you for making me hear the music.’
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