I AM ON FIRE

My coffee stained breath makes me uncomfortable. I have had a couple of sleepless nights, but this is by far the worst. And I keep intoxicating my lungs with the smoke from my cigarettes. Second pack and counting. On the table, my ash-tray lies tired. It is curved out to resemble the hippie sign, perhaps to compliment the freestyle path I trod. I am on fire, my hands are trembling and the corners of my mouth shake.

I crush a butt of cigarette on the tray, and I feel just as helpless. I feel like that spark of fire, too small to be of significance, that I have to be crushed at the end of my time. I am aching for more, my lungs are a blaze, they refuse. My mouth is dry, it begs. And so I smoke some more till I feel my eyes becoming heavy, and I stop smoking, not because I have realized I am heading downhill fast, but because my hands are too feeble to handle the lighter even if haphazardly.

It has been over a month since I resolved to get over the experience and achieve something in spite of myself. I continue to vow to myself that I will awaken and move mountains. I fail to convince myself, I see through the weak linen of my soul, I am crushed beyond repair. I continue trying to live though. The audacity of hope. Yes I had loved cooking with the passion only experienced when the wind rattling against the branches of a palm tree but having to bear witness to the work of my hands being taken down by a bulldozer had been in itself a form of death.

The day it happened was a Saturday morning. The busiest mornings of the week. I especially enjoyed making breakfast for the couples who stopped by my small hotel set up like a cottage. Somehow I’d be filled with hope seeing two people oblivious of the world, holding jittery hands, walking in tandem into my hotel and ordering breakfast. I would be glad to be a part of their love story even though through the omelette I would often make for them. For the few times I would witness a man proposing to a girlfriend, in my cottage, I would be elated to think of the prospects of the same happening to me despite all my relationships with dread-locked men that failed. My mother, when she was alive, never quite understood why I was drawn to such people who were trouble bound in her opinion. I particularly had something for those with nose rings as well, only those ones pierced me more; just like the rings pierced their noses. Nonetheless, they were art. And I loved that form of expression with all abandon.

So on this particular Saturday morning I woke up with a persistent feeling of impending doom. I reminded myself over and over again of my strength and how I could take on anything that came my way. But nothing would have easily prepared me for what I was to experience when I arrived to my hotel. There was a rattling noise, and for a moment I was confused that I kept on walking to find my cottage. The cottage that was passed on to my grandmother by her aunt, then later passed on to my mother and finally to me. And when it finally hit me that the cottage was being taken down by a bulldozer belonging to the government, I felt a venom rise in my bloodstream. I rushed to the scene and attempted to stop the bulldozer from finishing what it had started by standing in front of the machine. Poor life of mine! I was nearly shoved aside by the man in the bulldozer; he was clearly intent on finishing his work. Maybe even move on to the next building ordered down. My attempts to get any answers from the mean looking man were met by a mumble that I didn’t quite pick up correctly but were along the lines that my cottage, nay my grandmother’s aunt’s cottage was set up on government land intended to build a technical university. Sigh…

And it was one month later. How time goes so fast. It had been a rough one month of sleepless nights, of empty promises by the courts to follow up and a month of hollow sympathy by friends and foes alike.

**********

So now while sitting on my couch, I am contemplating life in all it’s complexities. I wonder how to get my electricity bill paid, I am wondering how to avoid my water connection being cut and mostly I am wondering if I will ever recover. My hands have steadied now, I pick up another cigarette and smoke vehemently, as if my life depends on the very act  that is my detriment. I feel a rage inside of me. I feel ready to take on the world. Tomorrow is another day, tomorrow I will rekindle my passion. Tomorrow I will fight for my dignity. But first, I need sleep, I hold back the tears.