by: Zahra Daya
You lay in His lap while He caresses your silky hair with a rough hand. The waning crescent tattoo on His forearm catches your eye. You never liked it—the moon stuck in that form, unable to get out, suffocating in this one eternal phase of its life . His movements are practiced, deft and this sends a jolt of remembrance through you. For it wasn’t always like this.
Yes, practiced, deft hands maybe, but used in an antithetical fashion. The whoosh through the air when the hand struck. Mirthless laughter and thudding footsteps. The crack of the coffee mug as it smashed into a million pieces. You stare at it, vaguely feeling the reverberation of the shatter deep within you. The pitter patter of the rain as it strikes the glass. The glass that lays in a million pieces. A million and one.
You sweep the glass up, a shard getting hooked onto your slipperless feet like a leech. You swat at it, but your tears blur your view; so you only see an expanding blob of deep crimson surrounding your big toe. The pink sparkly nail polish penetrates through your tears and catches the light, clearly mocking your melancholia.
In an apoplectic moment that places a layer of dust on your logic, your eyes complain like two children squabbling about the brightness of the light. You turn the lights off, drenching yourself in darkness. Like a shroud. You warm to the idea and a shiver runs down your back as you embrace the darkness. The darkness conjures a movie up for you. For your entertainment, he whispers. He shows you all kinds of things through his eyes. You become One. You see unspeakable crimes and acts committed by people that serve as the epitome of cowardice. Your eyes are forced shut when you hear the subtle click of the switch. Prised back open when you hear the click again. Click, click, click. Childish foolery. You scorn along with Darkness and like the feeling of invisibility. You play with the idea of hiding from your problems in this manner. You turn it over like a kebab on a skewer, savoring this proposal. For His practiced, deft movements have completely deserted your mind, leaving it open and up for consumption.
Darkness has pulled you into a perpetual dance, spun your mind, and now introduces you to the moon. You pirouette out of the tango, turn your body away from the moon; not for its detestable nebulous glow of silver that blinds you, but for its quick slips of change in the lunar phases. It reminds you all too much.
All too much of practiced, deft movements.
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