From Across The Room

From across the room, I see my mother. She waits there, hardly able to prop herself up, sweat lathering her like it has healing properties. My eyes gleam within the breadth of gasping screams. Then I was in her arms, and she coddled me with a love so fat, that I knew I chose right.

Hello, beginning

From across the room, I see the hands of my grandmother and mother, cheering me on as I stumble my first steps forward. The soil and grass that I’ve been feeling with my hands and mouth for months, finally able to be absorbed by the silky palms of my chubby feet.

One

Two

Three

And I made it.

From across the room, I see the future of my education welcome with heights of fear, but also equal excitement. I see those who might bully, and those who might extend an arm of inveterate friendship.

Hello

Hi

From across the room, I see my first bike. It stands suited with red and shiny with polish. I see much of its potential; the many sunset adventures it could take me on with my friends, and the grazes which would become a testimonial to my youth.

Woohoo

From across the room, I see my smudgy mirror and a naked body inside it. I see how my chest has begun to grow two bags of adolescence – one bigger than the other - and how my inner thighs surface milk lines of expanse. I see my richly cinnamon skin and my sweeping black hair. Now I can’t lay on my front while sleeping, I thought.

But this is me, raw and mature

From across the room, I see the strobe lights that lead me into a house I don’t know, and home with parents who’re away for the weekend. I see my friends hauling me in, my hand in one of their's, a bottle of foreign bitterness in another. I see boys and girls, and boys with girls. And later that night, I saw the alabaster toilet bowl being sprayed with an acidic liquid, then my mother’s kind, but slightly disappointed eyes, as she held my hair back for me.

I’m never doing this again

From across the room, I see someone lying on my bed, curled nakedly betwixt my sheets and blankets. I see their peaceful eyes closed, and their getting-musclier arms rested upon their chest. When in the bathroom, I see a wild crimson on the toilet paper I’ve just used, not from the monthly visitor, but from the one who is just beyond the walls.

It hurt a little, but it was nice

From across the room, I see an audience waiting. I look to the grandiose ceiling and its iterations of angels and cherubs, then to the piano whose keys ask my fingers to play them. I do, and the room ignites with a plethora of Beethoven’s tidal magic. I close my eyes when I finish, and feel the moment stretch the rest of the last key’s echo away, until silence imbues. I swallow dryly. Thunderous claps bite the quietude, finally. I exhale in relief.

I did this

Me

From across the room, I see him cry so exhaustedly on the sofa opposite me. I too sniffle up the last of my melancholy. The argument replays in my head over and over. I just can’t love someone who I don’t love anymore. Someone that hurts me. But then a cuddle like no other jackets me and I fall all over again into the depths of empathy and weakness. His quivering lips reach mine, and we remain that way for what feels like an eternity.

I love him, but not forever

From across the room, I see her hold our. Our little cluster of newness and trust. I get to hold her like I was held, and she latches straight onto the brown nipple that excretes sour nutrition. I see my wife come toward us with withered eyes of laborious joy. She locks us both in, and just like that, a family is bound.

This is peace

From across the room, I see her scream and scratch at her honey body. How can she not love something that I had so carefully made? At last, she gives into my arms, and I stroke her wispy hair. She’s naked like when I first held her, except now she’s not happy and I don’t know what to do.

Oh, how I love you, daughter

How I wish you’d love yourself

From across the room, I see the open coffin. I walk toward it, and she lays there with her arms placidly crossed over her old breasts, and mouth still in that endearing smile she’d always kept. My mother is gone, and now I seem to only descry a path of onyx. I want to climb in there with her and go to sleep, feel her maternal warmth against me one last time. But I look back at my own child and lover, and swallow the tartness of reality.

I cannot leave them

From across the room, I see her wave at me with that heavily sought-after scroll in her hand. She’s smiling with exuberance, and because of that, I cry more. She descends from the stage after the ceremony, and we take her in like it’s the first time we ever do. I am proud.

My baby did that

From across the room, I see the bags which I frantically pack. It’s night-time and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t like my job, my everyday routine. I miss my mother and my daughter who now lives abroad. I have my wife, but is that enough? Of course, it is - just not in this second. I need to escape, birth from habituality to take in a deep breath of freedom.

But how do I find it?

From across the room, I see multiples under the stark, sallow hospital light. All my family are here and weeping. But I’m not sad. I understand now. All the times whether good or bad, were times when I looked across the room and found love. Found the moment I was living in. I’d been present and perceived the naturality of life’s rollercoaster. Now, the ride had at last come to an end, and I need to get off into the unknown theme park which is the afterlife.

Goodbye

From across the room, I see warm light and pure, untainted love. I have become amongst the cosmos and the oxygens. The galaxies and all structures of time. Someone who wasn’t held by any kind of physical vessel asks me: Do you want to go on the rollercoaster, again? I nod. And I choose my mother, myself, my name, and my life.

Let’s go

From across the room, I see my mother, she takes me into new arms, and I cry from the shock that is incarnating again; saying goodbye to my old life and ways, to start a brand new one. I soon forget what I cry for and instead let the soothe of my birth giver sing me to sleep. Goodnight.

Goodnight