samad

02/18/11

 

*

“hey, you look fresh…like a hot pink bougainvillaea beauty…when did he first got you?”

 

the boy has been sleeping for three hours and a half. before he hit the hay, he was lying wide awake thinking of a particular place- -his bubble thought was yellow and there was a deep well, a seedling and a girl. his peers have known him to be an imaginative, sometimes fucked up, sometimes jolly, sometimes frugal, sometimes lazy boy. he has been visiting a cheap book store and has been secretly skimming on Dante’s Divine Comedy. when he walks around, he always imagines about the owners of those hanging clothes from windows, those people eating alone in food courts (and what’s going on their mind while swallowing every fatty dish), those women in skinny jeans and collared tops convincing him to buy a new phone casing (how they hide their tummy fats and those dark circles aroud their eyes)…those beggars with no arms or legs playing the harmonica or the improvised guitar (and how they cried when they came to consciousness and the leg or the arm is gone). now, he’s asleep for 3 hours– maybe dreaming, maybe lost.

 

“hey… talk to me, please… the oldest scar is not talking to me today for no reason.”

this is the heart scar talking. the heart scar was caused by someone the man met and loved and adored like no other. 

“hello… i am so sorry, i am new and i did not realize that i can communicate with you. just now. i woke up hurt and bleeding and i had no hands to do sign languages with. i am a fresh wound and i feel like something alien or dirty or ugly. i am not sure.”

“when i first realized that i live near his heart, i felt special and beautiful. i have seen some of his scars when he’s naked in the bathroom but they never talked to me. i am more than happy to meet you.  i was disaster when he first got me. sometimes, he’d pound his chest and i would get uglier. so i can relate to you. sometimes, he’d cry and i grew fatter. weird weird times”

“nice story. i am 4-hour old.he was too excited when he was biking again after a long while. fell down and got me.well, i am not sure if he was hurt or sad when he saw me. he seemed not to mind, he just wiped some sand away from me and splashed me some water.”

 ”i have a feeling you will look browner soon. in a couple of days, you will grow some helmet and after a week or so, i will not see you again. i am envious. i have been here for so long. i have written a lot of poems, listen to a lot of songs and got carousels in my core everytime he was starting to feel happy for some time. but yeah, i still look like a swamp of red and tears. people are complex creatures. there were months when i was almost gone but there were weeks i was hurting daily”

“sorry i have nothing to say. i cannot understand you in any way.”

“well, he got you by accident. he got me by some odd human attachment. maybe if i were caused by a knife or a broken glass, i should have disappeared. but he carries me anywhere he goes. sometimes, just for laughs, i jump and wave hello to people he is with so that they can see me and tell him about it. but they can’t recognize my voice.”

 ”ok. do you know then how you were born? when i was born, i just saw a bike, a sari-sari store and brown men laughing.”

“i wish i can recall. all i know is that i started to hurt when he was about to sleep one night and he started to squeeze the pillow. i wanted to help him but i am just a wound and wounds do not have hands to hug or sings to lull humans to sleep.”

“ok. have you seen someone who looks like you? i feel that you are experienced and well-traveled.”

“hmmmmm… aha! one time. he met a girl. the girl has big eyes and they always sparkled. i even thought they were luminous fish swimming to and fro. the girl has big hands and storng arms. i felt she hugged him sometimes. when they met, she hugged him hesitantly. when they eat something, she wanted to touch his nape but she was scared. i saw a similar wound under her collarbone. it was 3 years old.”

“how did you know? because you are wise enough to tell age?”

“we talked.”

that seemed to be the briefest line the wound near his heart spoke. it was a contemplative pause. the stars were out and his mother was tiptoeing to the kitchen, looking for something to wash her face before sleeping. 

“the girl’s scar was old but beautiful and attractive. i don’t know if he is a he or a she. so let me call it an ‘it’. maybe, we, wounds have no gender.. it said something like this, like a poem i wish i wrote:

 

they were like crabs—

he was the crab that climbed above her when they were younger,

the sea was always beautiful and the sunset glorious. one day, their shells slipped but 

they managed to climbed over one another. one gloomy day,  your crab hurt mine, terribly.

maybe it was time for him to live in another sea. 

your crab left. i grew. but one day, i became a scar and not a wound anymore. years and 

tropical rains healed me. and one summer, your crab came back and they were laughing again.

 

and you, why do you still look fresh and swollen and wide?”

 

“i did not know how to explain it. but i told the similar-looking scar that i am sometimes a scar–but i am also sometimes a wound. ambivalent, confused, hurting. then out of the blue it smiled at me and said:

 

i realized there are many different wounds/scars:

* those you inflict to others. they sometimes surface and re-surface. (weird immortality especially) when someone is sad or bored.

* those others caused you. they can be blown away by time and they can look like stories in due time.

* those that you inflict to yourself. 

* those  that you get by accident.

 

 

the man woke up in a balcony. he could see the tin roofs in the village from where he stood, calm and at home. a woman in plain white tee hugged him from behind, grabbed his waist with so much affection. she kissed his chin. she kissed him with an unexplainable fervor. she is a graceful dancer just by the way she held his jaws whenever they kiss. she has pink ankles and clean armpits. she has an oval scar on her right knee.

 

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