“Memories are liars”.
“Your fluency to brush jam with sentences on toasted bread on a stifling pigmented daytime makes you an adroit of speaking in fragments”.
Perhaps, I am just a fragment myself, aren’t we all? Two fragments joined together don’t make up a clause but we put sense in them to feel completed.
He speaks to me without hesitation by calling me an incomplete being while I spend the grey night justifying how one’s memories are mere exaggeration of self’s belief; rather my brain’s of what possible atrocity happened. We like to see ourselves as suffering even when the bruise is that of a stubbed toe.
I remember the time when my existence felt heavy under my eyes. It was John, my tainted identity, my shallowness, my decorated language in spring pink flowers when I speak with eloquence, my scarred cheek. He is everything of what I possibly could be if only I was conscious about controlling the thoughts that keep running errands to collect the tortured memory which wasn’t lived in the moment back in time.
So what was the dream analysis you were talking about? Did you drive through the lane of misjudgements once again to derive peace? John enquired with curiosity.
MAD, crazy it's 8:50 already! Holy Jesus, I need to rush. Give me my Juice. Alora, MY JUICE? ALORA!
Yes, give me a second, a minute, a moment.
Suddenly the ticks of the clock and ripples in the water made a sound too loud, it kept beating my eardrum with a stick too hard that was sharp enough to cut my throat as well. The void would rest its feet then, silence forever; only the farness till human’s sense of forever is.
Alora!
His scream for my name almost pierced my head. Each syllable was pronounced with such etiquette that the glass fell from my hands.
Children break things, Alora, Be careful.
Before I could respond, he was out of my sight. It felt blurry and the furniture seemed to shake in a fixed motion, enough to make me sick.
Children break things. It stayed with me. The sentence stayed back while his feet rushed him. My brain tricked me to believe that the walls were echoing the sentence loud and harsh in my ear until the alarm bells of caution didn't ring to make it stop.
It was an accident but he’d call me a child. Children innocently make mistakes while adults foolishly indulge themselves in accidents. He rushed me, uttered mad as a casual acquaintance of his like my mother of thirty seven when I was eight.
Beer bottles and gunshots stained the mind of the mindful,
Noises of familiarity scarred my cheeks than the voices of unknowns,
I kissed her eyes before her night’s sleep,
So I could count the stars which celebrated my widowed presence.
The words align perfectly as if they are delicately woven by my repressed feelings of belongingness to a place unknown by my own self. A broken glass has cracks in them and it bleeds through the fingers of a being that picks it up to clean. I was a broken glass and I bled on people who were here for me, yet my mind plays the trickery of convincing me that John thinks of me as a naive girl who knows nothing other than speaking lucidly in metaphors and paraphrases of Sylvia Plath.
I adore her because she had tasted the blackness which I certainly only nibbled on the tip of it till I vomited it. Vomited it on other people because I don’t possess half the talent of who wrote Lady Lazarus. Oh how is her smile so reflecting that it slows down the horses of hatred? Her smile could make the inner light of people reach in every aching corner of self. I would never understand or would even try to consider persons sane having cruel resentment towards Plath.
My mother. My mother might not be the most nurturing woman I had, but she surely made demons inside me to prepare me for the world that’s supposedly known as reality for a bunch of folks, but I was rather too well known of the otherly senses and perceives of the otherly world.
I tried journaling to let things come out of me on the sheet, but it was always that the plain undecorated sheet intimidated my brain. I was afraid it would not make sense and no one would tell you how draining it is for the finger to hold a pen and put the right amount of force so that the ink would not stain when the page is turned over. The way my mind races thought after thought is unimaginable because while here I am writing about my physical pain caused because I suffer emotionally, my mind has skipped and is somewhere creating overlaps and jumbles of some randomness which certainly has no existence in it. It is me who creates it as a subject. I give them importance and if I learnt to convert it into frivolous matters, then it’d presence would be as relevant as an atom’s sight to the naked eye.
I took up journaling to silence them, but overtime I learnt that they needn’t require silencing but rather comfort and acceptance more than an ugly dot that stays at the back of your mind like a smudged inkblot.
The best escapism is reading Plath’s journals. Her mind’s chaos is therapy to my whole occurrence as a human being.
I curled up and read, she says; “I may never be happy but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day, one must sleep, and at the next dawn______
The telephone rang with a buzzing irritating noise that could make my body shiver because of its strong vibrations.
Alora? Hello, it's John on this side!
Oh John, you, you had my heart in my mouth.
Ah! Swallow it back through your throat. It should be where it must be.
It’s not funny. Why’d you call at such an odd hour?
Yes, I am taking you to the park today evening and this time there are no excuses and I don’t wish to hear your heart’s lament, I’d rather hear it today at the park.
John. Are you serious, I don’t want
He cut me and didn’t let me finish. Even though I hadn’t thought through how I’d refuse him, I am pretty sure by this time it comes naturally to me.
No. When the clock strikes six, at Daffodils. See you soon bud.
He hung up the phone and I was an awakened ghost at the moment of what just happened. I wanted to slam the mirror so badly and break it, break and destroy all the reflections, hurt the objects, perhaps because I am a coward who couldn’t hurt herself but the parts of myself that disgusted me the most. And at that point, I hated the person looking through the mirror.
I hadn’t been out of the house in months that I have lost track of worldly behaviour. Suddenly, I was petrified and had every possible ruminating thought about how I was completely sane at home and didn’t need the stale air to feel myself at best. I travelled through books, poetry, music at my own pace, no one pushing me and it felt at ease, I felt comfortable and more importantly safe. I could choose where I’d want to go, whom to be and forget about myself. Last I recall, I was in Baghdad, in a post war situation.
I slapped my mental assumptions of things and got ready to walk myself to Daffodils.
I walked alone down the lane. I felt I’m Leda and Zeus’s eyes around me. Yes, the manipulators are the world’s most charming set of humans who abuse you with driving you down to the guilt trips that are an occasional visit.
I am mad, lunatic, completely on the verge of being borderline mentally sick. John isn’t a manipulator, he’s a caregiver, my caregiver. I can trust him, maybe not, maybe yes, maybe.
People often say evenings are a reward to the bright blinding sun’s light. I am not sure to what extent that could be true to me for I feel the dusk is the time of the criminal crippling anxiety and overwhelming outburst of emotions.
I was seated at the bench and trying to gaze my eyes upon every object to keep my head away from my own hideous self when the sky was peach. There are children jumping up and down like graceful swans. I don’t know quite enough, whatever children do; they do it with poise and such passion. I would like to have a kid myself too. A plain wedding, husband and a child to take care of. It seems to fill me up with some sort of goodness in me. Not going to lie, but I do feel nice looking at children.
A tear rolled down my left cheek. It wasn’t warm but rather a cold drop without any notion of warning. After all, it's a void. It is a void that can’t be filled. I keep forgetting. A strong sense of ache in my chest and the sight makes my eyes drown into something I never had never will.
I was devastated. I could feel myself going hysterical. A crazy person might not know the reason for the limits of rage but they do know when they start losing their calm.
There is no definite reason to sudden loss of oneself and react to the situation even though it might not be threatening. Readers, you’ll might why I feel so unsure about things and my reactions, my answer to that is, I am not a psychoanalyst.
I picked and threw a big beer glass bottle across the park to hit it on the child’s smiling face.
Everything around me went numb. No more noise, no more screaming, glares and silence.
I could see John frozen. Only if he had been on time, this could have been avoidable. For those wondering, the bottle didn’t hit the child.
I knew I wasn’t fit to be out in space, it was not my thing anymore. People weren’t for me, neither am I for them and the sooner John understood we’d all live like a stagnant sea not the one with frequent waves.
He took my hand and we were out of the park. I wanted him to hug me so tight that my bones felt crushed, until I stopped breathing oxygen. He did none of it rather kept the silence. I felt restless as if silence would mourn if it didn’t speak. I wanted to rest myself on his heavily built body and cry my lungs out. I didn’t though. I should still be grateful that he held my hand and acknowledged me.
As I quote Sylvia, “I am, I am, I am”.
Where are you taking me? I spoke to break the ice but no response. Of course, why would he even? I kept walking and went where he took me.
No sooner my brown hues saw we were in a graveyard. Graveyards are my favourite place to be.
Dead people, ghosts and buried lies. No harshness, no harm, only people resting in peace. Brutality was asleep and so it felt good to be around.
Why are we here? I spoke.
No response. He was quiet as a stale fish standing near a tombstone, not quite sure whose.
I had no idea what he was going to speak was about to change my world upside down. He did and all I could was listen, just listen.
Your mother. That’s your mother. Plath’s trepidation and roses over your head. Rather it’s your mother’s cynicism in you.
How do you know about my mother?
She was a fine lady but with terrible self inflection. A charming lady of diligence knew how to be with men and most definitely, a spell. Not sure if I can call her a manipulator or an extreme sense of knowing what she was seeking. She had her shortcomings, everyone has but some aren’t justifiable.
Your mother wasn’t raped. She rather was on a notch to torture her ex husband. She hit herself up, in places where delicate kisses are given. She bled days and days to collect evidence to present her as a sympathetic lady. She hit you with beer bottles. The scar right above your left eyebrow is your past living in you today, your present. She tied you up with ropes to suffocate you, hurt you, so that she could torture his murderous soul who left her. She had nothing against you but a remain of what her husband gave. You were only a physical mere doll, a living doll that reminded her daily, touched her wounds and hence she bled on you, wished you dead. I know you have the memories of it alive in you and why you are terrified with glasses and bottles. It shivers you and makes your bodily hair stand.
She was a selfish woman, Alora. She stayed with her husband so that she could have an embellished wedding. She was cold and cynical. Loved the parts which were lovable, ugliness and dark matters had no room in her heart. If I stayed with her, she would have killed me. I do know now, who has been selfish all this while. It is me who left you.
Don’t make yourself a woman out of your mother’s feedings. People are more than the parts of what you find yourself in them. If you are desperate to be loved, love will never satisfy you ever.
Who are you? How do you know so much about my past?
John Wycliffe. He uttered and disappeared in the mist.
I watched him walk away. He left once again. He is selfish and I am Alora John Wycliffe, his daughter.
I understood my past today and though I had a lot of questions, I sighed and quoted Plath once again, “I am, I am, I am”.
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