to burst
I left from work in tears, hand stained red and my shirt ripped. I get tired of being good, bending my head, carrying the weight. I get tired of ten-hour shifts, with two cups of coffee and quick sips of water to survive, poetry in three languages. My hands trembled. I half-hoped for wasp stings, for something sharp and awakening.
I was half-running and the sky was still and covered by a thick, yellowish blanket of clouds, the leaves on the trees dead still, and on the phone, my mother was fretting over the storm that had reached her. Flash in my head, eye of the storm. There was a wall of grey ahead, my tears dried on my face, and then the world ahead was illuminated by pale violet. I gasped.
Suddenly, a white stripe between the grey and the pale yellow, coming closer. Walking where I haven't walked before, the first gusts of wind came to meet me, the street lamps swung back and forth on their wires, flickered on and off. I laughed, gasped, I turned back and picked up my pace. The clouds followed on my heels, the dark reaching, the wind. Then then then. Lamps flickering, clouds illuminated by shocks of pale violet, white, the heavy thunder growls, the darkness had come, the trees bent and sighed and howled and I had to shout so that the kind-voiced woman could give me the cab company's number. Line busy, then no connection. I reached a bus stop, empty. The clouds broke then, the rain drumming the roof, and I looked at places to run to beneath the black sky, the flickers of light. A boy stepped out of a bus across the street, spread his arms to embrace the storm. I laughed; it is a relief to remember, such people do exist.
The rain seeped through my thin, ripped shirt as I stepped from the bus stop into the bus. In the city, I followed the boy's example, spreading my arms in the rain. My tears were gone, my hands stopped trembling.
I have always been fond of storms and thunder. Two of my favourite childhood memories are of walking or riding my bicycle when a thunder storm suddenly catches me, and there's no way but keep going, be fearless. It's scary. It's exhilarating. It's being alive, all that electricity getting its release, that heaviness shattering suddenly. I am restless and I like it how they make everything new. How uncontrollable they are, how liberating. The petty little things are nothing more than that. There's always everything else. There is so much more.
And in the rain, my heart grows lighter, I am less afraid. It is so strange, the world, and everything in it. The strangeness of being here. This heaviness is not all. There is so much more to come.
(One of the most beautiful pieces of lyric ever, "how strange it is to be anything at all")
I was half-running and the sky was still and covered by a thick, yellowish blanket of clouds, the leaves on the trees dead still, and on the phone, my mother was fretting over the storm that had reached her. Flash in my head, eye of the storm. There was a wall of grey ahead, my tears dried on my face, and then the world ahead was illuminated by pale violet. I gasped.
Suddenly, a white stripe between the grey and the pale yellow, coming closer. Walking where I haven't walked before, the first gusts of wind came to meet me, the street lamps swung back and forth on their wires, flickered on and off. I laughed, gasped, I turned back and picked up my pace. The clouds followed on my heels, the dark reaching, the wind. Then then then. Lamps flickering, clouds illuminated by shocks of pale violet, white, the heavy thunder growls, the darkness had come, the trees bent and sighed and howled and I had to shout so that the kind-voiced woman could give me the cab company's number. Line busy, then no connection. I reached a bus stop, empty. The clouds broke then, the rain drumming the roof, and I looked at places to run to beneath the black sky, the flickers of light. A boy stepped out of a bus across the street, spread his arms to embrace the storm. I laughed; it is a relief to remember, such people do exist.
The rain seeped through my thin, ripped shirt as I stepped from the bus stop into the bus. In the city, I followed the boy's example, spreading my arms in the rain. My tears were gone, my hands stopped trembling.
I have always been fond of storms and thunder. Two of my favourite childhood memories are of walking or riding my bicycle when a thunder storm suddenly catches me, and there's no way but keep going, be fearless. It's scary. It's exhilarating. It's being alive, all that electricity getting its release, that heaviness shattering suddenly. I am restless and I like it how they make everything new. How uncontrollable they are, how liberating. The petty little things are nothing more than that. There's always everything else. There is so much more.
And in the rain, my heart grows lighter, I am less afraid. It is so strange, the world, and everything in it. The strangeness of being here. This heaviness is not all. There is so much more to come.
(One of the most beautiful pieces of lyric ever, "how strange it is to be anything at all")