Trying

In the sultry shade of this apartment I was born; disappearing into cream walls. Trying to ignore the amassing shadows; trying not to fear speech itself – as if language deserved a lashing for existing. My first word; what was it? I don’t know. Do either of my parents? No. My sister –Namir?

My mother left when I was young; too young to have absorbed childhood memories of that silken face. An angel, forced to wear the mask of the damned; a blanket veil which I stroked when she visited. Trying to peel away the layers of mistaken trust; trying to locate her heart which she, too freely, had given my father. Her eyes...Alice-blue, like a fantasy world’s skyline, buried deep inside the shadows of womanhood.

Never did I yearn for that paternal comfort some children crawl towards in the early hours of their lives. Never was my young heart fooled into free-falling towards him in false hope of change. So, each morning, as an auburn sunset blazed and reached towards me...like his fists, slowly unclenching, I welcomed it. It burned...lifting his finger prints from my skin – erasing his caustic touch. His fiery ‘you must obey me’ tone; insult after insult. Degrading my honour, until I long to burn up– vaporise into the air and float, as ashes, toward freedom.