In Annailo's mind…
There have been times when I was certain the world would freeze. That the earth would stop breathing, and I would be standing still listening to the nothingness around me.
But it never did.
Every night when the darkness was swallowing me in its lonely carpet, and the silence was so intense I could hear the hair growing on my skin, a new morning came. Always. And I hated it. I didn’t understand how the globe could continue to spin in circles around the sun, when I was pressing my foot to the ground to stop it.
“Why are we forgetting?”
I ask, and the answers I receive do not comfort me.
“Life goes on.”
Easy as that. They blow out the words to me, through dry lips, with their cold breath. I listen. I hear them. But I do not understand it. How can we continue like nothing happened, pretending everything is the same, that we are okay, when we are not? Something did happen. I know it did. I saw it, and I felt it inside of me. It started in the bottom of my stomach, and crawled up to my chest, pressing my heart up to my throat. No matter how much I swallowed, I had red pieces coming up, lingering on my tongue, tasting sweet. Sweet bitterness, shame and anger.
I wish I could find the person responsible, so I can put my finger to his face and tell him that he are the one to blame, the one who screwed up, and that I am the one who are paying for it. That I from this day on will hate him, call him names, blame him. But I can’t. The only person responsible for any of this is me. I know my own finger too well to take any notice of it. It is making a wet mark on the mirror, and refuses to let go. Even if I blow on it, and a spot of thin humid fog is surrounding it, it is still there. It cannot hide.
“You never learn, you know. That’s the problem with you, you never learn.”
I am fully aware of it, I don’t have to tell myself this over and over again. If my blame could be placed elsewhere, I could decide to stay away. I would dig a hole and burry them, put a cross on top and write ‘rest in peace’ where the two lines meet in a center. And then I could forget. Or forgive. Move on, together with life.
But I cannot run away from myself. When I lie in the hole, I have no one to cover me with mud and worms. Seconds will pass like heavy steps in a corridor, and I would not forget.
Ironically, I fear it. That I one day will be able to accept that okay, I did a mistake, it’s okay. I tried, I failed, I fell. And I rose once more, moved on. Then the globe will continue to spin, and I will continue to breathe. Something called memories will move into my mind, where they will rest quietly behind lively brown eyes. And no on will know about it. It will be forgotten in open air.
No one will see the invisible footprints in the snow, where a grandfather once trod and whispered “it is a girl”. There will be no more stories told by the fireplace, about creatures in the deep of the forest and mountains. Not a single soul will know that I once swore an oath to a dog in a small village in Italy. He will sleep behind a house corner – alone, at the same time as a birch will give in after years of abuse. It will fall to the ground and rotten. And no one will even notice.
Unless we gather. All of us, every living creature from pole to pole. We can hold hands in a line around the globe, count to three and jump. And maybe, just maybe, we will sail out of path. Or if not for anything else, newspapers will write about us and we will be logged somewhere, so that new generations can read about us and remember that for one short moment, the human kind united.
Will you remember the birch’s white trunk outside the window where you sit every day with your morning coffee? Or will you step out your door to greet a new day welcome, and ignore the cry of the dove? Despite it all, life goes on. It has to. There is no other way.
(c) annailo.net – Do not copy in whole or in part in any form. Thank you.
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