An acorn in the wind

I have been trying to get high since but nothing is working. Why did I wash the sink so slow that time? It must have rained before because the soil was smoking & the flowers were fat with seeds. But the fat grass & dangling trees were not the source of my distraction. I dreamt of living outside the box, unhinged from the matrix, freed at last.

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The fan revolving above me was the only life in that room, where I fled to after the dreaming was done. There was no one there waiting for me with laughter on their arms & hunger in their eyes. It was me alone. I was used to it. When did the rain fall?

Old friends had come & gone; I was used to the monologue of my silence as I & it pattered about the hovel I called home looking for myself. The wind smelt of rain & it had a sharp bite. Why are the clouds gathered low in congress? Did it rained or is it going to?

From the window to my bed was the longest journey. Like an acorn travelling the desert wind, I loitered & lingered near the whitewashed bones of this world, hungry to be a part of it & hating it. The wind played the trees & flower petals. Crickets tuned their instrument in preparation for the inked night. I admired them their constance & persistence. I hated their simple minded determination to continue in spite of life.

I wished I was high enough to forget & also to remember. When I went to see a priest for confession, I tell him nothing new. I say—fornicate, lied, for these & other sins which I cannot remember, I am sorry. Then comes absolution & I am back to my edge of existence repeating the same thing. Those sins that I did not remember are the ones that haunts me the most but how can I speak of these things? How do I unburden myself to another?

There are those days after cleaning the sink to its shine, after I have mopped the floors from top to bottom, cleaned the cobwebs off their perch, squeezed dust off the wet rag, I sat on the porch, lit the sun with my fingers and smoked it bone dry. There are days when the world is too dark to make meaning and I survived by staring at the wall.

If only I could get high forever, enough to forget who I used to be, it would be grand. I would rule myself more. This kingdom of dried tired skin is all I had. To have just this one place to hide is a heavy burden. Sometimes I detached from this body & from a distance, watched it live. The struggles to laugh, to engage, to be firm against the tide surprises me. In those times, I realised that though weak as wet paper, I can be stronger than concrete epitaphs.

When I thought of death, it was not the after that bothers me. It was the process of dying that ignited my curiosity. How does it feel to leave knowing not where you are headed? How long does the pain last? What stops you from fighting? Why seek it?

It is amazing, the thoughts that flowers in a lonely mind. I dreamt & fell with Lucifer into hell. I rose without wings & fled the layered hell. I sought God in small things; paper clips, safety pins, pen & paper, paper maché dolls, tattered books of people who have refused to die and so on. I do not know if I found him. What I know is while I cleaned the sink, while the silence ate me up, & my eyes wandered the length & breath of freedom, I said my prayers.

Through the window lied another world, a parallel universe to my singular home. I did not interact with it. I did not speak the language. Outside is freedom but do I deserve it? Will be able to find home again if I leave? Outside, through the window, it felt like rain but the boys were kicking a ball, the girls were skipping & the dogs were barking with old bones between their canines. It was the world of the living out there. Me, I am a ghost, a mirage, an elliptical stain in the grimness of existence. Who remembered when it rained?