Masked Fear

Summer was fast approaching. The greenness of the terrain was dehydrating daily; turning yellow and hollow, rustling under the hot breath of Aeolus. The days grew longer, slowly, steadily, like a child’s hair before its first haircut. Wounded weeds bled their juices, emitting their souls that filled our nostrils in spontaneous breaths. Hairy caterpillars had come and gone; butterflies for a day, dead the next. Or so the story goes.
Running in deadening fields, manoeuvring swiftly under the threat of an imaginary bad-guy, laughing in delight, in success of eluding capture-- of cheating death. Mortality meant nothing then. Disregarding the prickly bushes scratching violently your fresh skin, dropping to catch your breath and laugh until your guts hurt and your facial muscles cramp, your smile is forever fixed on your pre-pubescent face. And there, lying in the warmth of earth, clasping your scathed elbow, fingering a small patch of skin flipping open like a hardback’s cover, you never wonder if it will always be like this. You’re sure it will.
But then it isn’t.

A booming, familiar voice shakes furiously that giant Etch A Sketch sky of yours, erasing the cloudy puppies, polar bears, Sundaes and really fast snickers. They turn into your father’s hologram instead, whose lungs inflate for a second try at your name. The voice enquires about your whereabouts. It implores you to run back home. Home? But you are home.
Pressing the back of your head in the dirt, reluctant to go, turns the silence between callings into pleasurable suspension. Dust and pebbles mix with hair when a shiver shoots down your spine, as satisfying as fire.
If only you were nameless. If only you could push hard enough; bury your self back into earth.

 

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