my mother grew up near a sugar cane field, in a village where neighbours were also your family.
when her father was shot, everybody ran to the creek of her fence. through the guava tree and dying flowers, they said: do you think there will ever be a man like him again?
in the house, her family lost their voices.
they knew the answer before it had even been asked.
there would never be anyone like him again.
years later, i am raised in a small world. in the mist of small streets, the children of my town run toward the lamp posts. with the light igniting the way, there is no game we can play without the moon, the sun, and all its people joining along.
usually, in these lights, my family appears ideal. made of five smiling people who dance around each other like puzzles waiting to be completed.
but years ago, something was buried beneath us all. no one has been able to find it ever since. a unfound, beautiful, treasure of our own undoing.
for years, our house was fenced away and our neighbours knocked on our door every morning so i could “come play”. and i did. my sister and i holding hands with strangers that felt more like family than our own. running for hours and hours and hours. when the sun set, we were afraid for the call home. inside was a graveyard digging. it was finding caskets of dead pieces you did not know could die. and people that you did not know could be alive.
that was life for us back then. our eyes too bright and too shy to see what was in front:
we were aging and aging. wine and bruises and bones that ran brittle with their history. i am afraid of the places we grow and how the vines take us into their mold. how easily i could become a tree standing still. a bush within all the wildflowers and all i would be is conquered.
you know, i was a child when the crickets made home in my ears. for years, i heard the echoes of sounds i was afraid to go back to. a thousand places and not one where i was not shaking. a thousand homes and none i can call them by just that. my mother grew up near a beautiful sugar field! and it feels like i grew up in a fire. i know our stories are our own. but i am wondering when i will let the flames keep me warm, rather than burn me.
Mak (she/her) is passionate about the environment, social injustices, and banana bread. Mak dreams of finding a way to help the world in one way or another. While she figures out how to do that, she spends most of her time reading, beneath trees or in the ocean, and writing about love, love, and more about love. Most of her work has been hidden on her Instagram account @constuhllations, but she also spends time posting on @riptdes, as she figures out ways to share all the words she wants to say in the right way.
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