In passing
Spread out before me is a deserted rooftop, brown-orange dust layered on it like icing. I sit on a pair of steps that connect the main terrace to a tiny one that overlooks the portico, facing the narrow street below, unoccupied, lonely, like the house under my feet. The street flows like a river from the up-road on the right and into the space in front on me; past a pale orange house and the house I sit on and takes a graceful turn around it, covering two of its four sides.
No one lives in this house anymore, but it sees traces of what its previous occupants had left behind. Beer and Old Monk bottles have been haphazardly swept together, forming dusty huddles in the dirt. Plastic cups, some unused and dirty, some crushed, some still holding black-brown liquid, are also seen about.
An old notebook also lays open on the floor of the terrace, its pages lined and rusty. Another notebook lies open on my lap, its pages lined as well and neatly engraved upon with pencil lead, deliciously carving words into to pages to come.
Every thing around me is dark, and from a distance behind me, a streetlamps illuminates my back, making an artificial silhouette of my figure, projecting it onto the last step and the miniature terrace before me.
The mood is not scary, but thrilling. The feeling of being back at this rooftop is lines with nostalgia and hurting, for all that has happened in this large house that now dances to the whims of the faintest winds.
What a beautiful night it is. The moon, an almost perfect round shines it light as if all the stars in the layers of air between me and the cosmos have gathered up in it. The layers of clouds among the moon seem so scarce, as though the spirits have been using them to wipe their marble like tears and are disposing of them elsewhere, reducing their numbers in the sky.
It is a crisp night sky, blanketing the heavens, leaving only faint openings shining brightly over the earth.
I search for stars and cannot find any, except for one, that peeps out through the trees as though it was plucked from the skies and entrapped in the branches. These branched twist and turn about, like jail bars.
This star looks so desperate, trying to grab my attention for help. She looks helpless, this star, tied up in those millions of leaves, entangled in them having struggled so much in its entrapment.
A dark abyss looms about, like the sacrifices of darkness under candlelight. No one is saying a word, not a word. Silence and the night, they were the perfect ingredients for a lonely, chilly and all the more stimulating night. A lazy wind rushed in. The only sound that could be heard through the incessant air was the flapping of my sleeves and the rustle of my hair, knotting the strands like embroidery thread.
A soft rustle while I twisted in my seat, a distant bus hoots from the main road nearby and I allowed a snivel to well up inside me. There was music somewhere and I started to sway in its rhythm, like a dancer on a moonlit stage.
I pull myself off the steps and stretch, gawking to the distance, past coconut trees and dusty roads, and look up at the sky again. This time I really dance, leaving my notebook and pencil back on the step, placing it in a direction that allows it to witness my movements. I turn my palm outwards, the other sits on my hip, I bend my knees and turn my chin to an angle. I become a courtesan.
I lift both my arms and round them in the air above my head, the knees bend outwards imitating the design my arms make. I become a ballerina.
I close my eyes and turn. Round and round I turn in my shoes. Everything spins around me. The coconut trees, other rooftops, the light orange house on my right, the larger terrace, the space around me on the smaller terrace, the streetlamp, the star in its branches, the moon, the street, the old notebook, my new notebook, plastic cups and alcohol bottles… everything spun in a frenzy, becoming a blur, disappearing in my purple vision, never to revive again just how I left it.
Never to revive again just as I left it.
I hope.