SUMAC

Oh maa, is it true? Do they still put black and bad luck in the same sentence? Who was this God, who painted destinies in black and white and then created color? Oh maa, only if the world was that simple, only if it were black and white.

Let me tell you about today, how some things are beautiful only in the absence of color. I entered the park and there she was, so beautifully sitting around color, a black cat. For a moment, everything around seemed to have been created for her, and her only! Maa, you see how God is an artist, a poet, a dreamer! Oh mother look, how he had made something so lightless and dark, to be able to shine I walk towards her and see something rise in her eyes. Fear or surprise, I'm not sure. Maybe maa, she had known how people thought of her as a harbinger of a doomsday that was near. When they saw her, they saw a future of calamity. A future of death. Maybe that's why she ran away maa, so as to save me from dying. But maa, deaths were unstoppable, inevitable, and unforgiving.

How amazing it was to read a book under a tree today until He appeared in ugly white clothes. Staring right into me, scanning my body. Slowly walking towards me, and the fear in me rising a little more. Oh maa, I don't know why I freeze in fear. I don't know why still, after so many years, I'm afraid of men and the manly. How those images of boys from the school still haunt me. Their hand touching me wherever they want, whenever they want. The pictures of my face trying to smile so hard despite the agony, like a soldier still rushing forward in a war already lost. Memory flashes in front of me in moments like these.

Maa, I don't know why I tend to jump a little backward whenever I see men in anger charge forward. Why do I suffocate in all men's spaces, despite being one myself? I don't know maa, why after so many years, I still haven't told you anything. Why do I lay at night knowing nothing about myself? Always asking, who I really am? And for whom, I am? Why today, something in me died when He came close, with eyes drooling with the most evils of desire. How life was leaving with every step he took towards me. How alone I felt when I thought of him forcing himself onto me. You see maa? How something in white had all the darkness in the world. How he had even made a color as bright and alive as white, to appear lifeless. I prayed as this aged man with almost exposed genitals slowly walked towards me. I prayed maa, for what? I don't know. But some God had listened. Life filled me again when I saw them coming.

There they were, Ahmed and Papa, coming my way. Let me tell you maa, how sometimes only seeing one of your own, saves you. A sense of hope had melted the ice in me and I stood up and ran toward them, as fast as I could. As free as I had ever felt, because maa; freedom was a moment. A fleeting moment.

In a long green field with a sky painted in a cold blue hue. A boy was seen flying towards two of his own. A sporty little brother he loved, at least most of the days. And a father, he had disappointed for being what he was. What he always will be.

Maa, I told Papa everything that happened. He put me in his arms, we had crossed the walls between us. But oh maa, without the protection of walls, we sat there vulnerable. And there it was, words wounding me in every way possible. Him telling me how I should man up. Oh maa, I wish at that moment I could tell him that he was wrong. I wish I could tell him everything he hated me for, everything that killed both of us! How I hugged my pillows to sleep. And that I thought maybe cats were made for people who had no one. How books and warm showers somehow saved me. How when I'm alone, I sometimes wear your lipstick. I wish I could tell him that it wasn't my fault! But don't worry, maa. One day I'll run so fast. I'll run and never look back.

I'll escape everything that makes me miserable. And if only I'm fast enough. Maa! If only I keep running. Maybe Oh Maa, Maybe! Someday I might reach somewhere where there are no bars. No bodies, no lipsticks. Where there are no cockroaches to scare me. and to anger Papa, for being a 'man' and still fearing those insects. A place where there's no son, that's "Girly". And no daughter who's ever killed, in any way. Where no flowers are pulled out because it was "so pretty". And then maa, maybe there's nothing in color. Nothing to hope. To Hate. To love. To hurt. And the only thing that remains is the soul.