This tender bruised sun, heavy with the bulging anger of rain, settled into the horizon like a sore, as the boy wandered down the evening road. He had lost the slippers somewhere down the road, after the first drizzle, after the first crowd of boys had rushed him, after he had ran and fell into the manhole, after he had washed his bleeding knee, after the kind lady had given him a lift, after she had tried to kill him in her bathroom, after he had climbed through the window and broke his wrist on a flowerpot.
He stumbled near the parked cart filled to the brim with rubbish and rested his hands on the rim, catching his breath. He wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to wriggle his wrist to feel how painful it was. It was swollen. He sighed and pushed away from the cart but the owner, a madman dressed in rags, his face hidden behind the buzzing wings of black flies, stood before him, watching him with red angry eyes.
i will drop you off the earth,
the dun sun in the sky is a witness to hell.
i will crush the battle that is your soul,
the river that are old tears is my skin.
what do you dangle before me-your trauma,
the goddess of your chest, your hungers,
the god of your fingers? This boy, you
are a thing of beauty, an unsung villian
in the eternal tale of pain and memory.
how long will you wander the dusk of
this road? how long will you linger
like dust unsure of direction to home?
The madman sang. The boy staggered from the cart as if drunk but the mad man grabbed him by his broken wrist and squeezed. the boy screamed and it was night. The boy opened his eyes to the darkness. He was lying on the floor near an old abandoned building in a fetal position. There was dried tears on the side of his face. He struggled to a sitting position, placed his two hands on the floor and then shock filled his face. There was no pain in the broken wrist. He checked the hand in the poor light and he saw that there was no swelling either. Was it a dream, he wondered. When he checked his knee though, that wound festered there.
It was morning and the sun was not there. The clouds hung low, their heads joined together in gossip, dark anger etched on their brow. THe boy wandered from his sleep into a path that trailed through a farm. He passed several early birds working already on their plots. He eyed the ripe mangoes that hung swollen like pregnancy from the bent sternum of the mango tree. His fingers itched to grab a bite of that succulent skin but an old woman watched him from under the shade of her raffia hat. She had a big stick in her hand and her muscled arms looked like they knew how to use the stick well. The boy moved on.
The path journeyed into the road, the asphalt black like a starry night. Across from the left, a bare football pitch was in use. Several boys were kicking a rubber ball round and round, up and down the pitch, yelling at each other, savage with their fists and feets, nose running, spittle flying, drowning in sweat. The boy watched them with the hunger of the lonely then he shrugged and turned his eyes to the lone distance that beckoned to him.
He walked long until the wound on his knee began to scab and heal the quick healing of the young. The hunger pangs become claws tearing into his stomach walls. He holds the stomach and groans, bitter with pain. The pain increases as the claw lick his blood from his stomach. He falls to the ground and cries out. The road does not reply or rush to his aid. it has its journey to complete. A little girl comes out of the mirage of the road, bouncing on her feet, a stick of sweet sticking out of her spit clean lips. she stops before the groaning boy and asks,
"Do you want sweet?"
The boy groans his reply. The girl removes the sweet from her mouth and stretches it towards the boy. The boy opens his mouth to receive the gift but before the sweet could enter the boy's mouth, the girl withdraws her hand and giggled. She did it again and again, and each time, the boy fell for it. His groans gradually became a roar. The little girl, innocent in her mischief, did not see when the claws in the boy's stomach tore out of the boy, grabbed her by the head and dragged her back into the boy. It was a fast thing. The boy laid there, staring at the purpling sun, screeching in horror from the sky into the nonchalant velvet of another evening.
IMage Credit: pixabay
Yours always,
Osahon (warpedpoetic)