The Seconds Before

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Do you know such stillness when the audience awaits for continuance to a drama? Any sign. Any hint. Anything. A startled stare, a turn of the head, a gaze through the window. Anything. Or perhaps more shouting. More explaining. Little less bit dying. The clock is ticking. Time to choose the first lines to say up on stage.

Sometimes we choose to let out a scream. Sneer and spit on the distant others. Crawl under and lick off our scattered ego and superiority right from the floor. Tactics, fallacy, holy sacrifices of the Great Revolution, are reeling us in to the spiraling vortex of moral treachery and more and more manipulation at the mercy of self-serving motives. Like a painful sigh in the room shortly after a burst of pretentious laughters. One blow after another fucking one.

Sometimes we choose to stand far enough and observe figurant strangers from the safer distance. Strangers as much as gods to the crying mother of a Palestinian son, a new king gazing in disbelief of victory and embracing lovers upon green, northern hemisphere. And if we are standing too far, it seems merely as an object: an inanimate, predictable object of no soul nor heart, panting its wicked way for the cheese at the end of the maze. No margin for error nor miracle nor magic. Like a deck of cards without its magician.

Sometimes we choose to sit on the bench as others take rollercoastering rides reaching to the clouds. Another charade to play along. Another wave to the excitement above. Another falling leaf finding way to our hands. The ice popsicle in our hands melting away. Don’t melt. Don’t melt. Don’t. Yet we can’t make it stop.

That moment. It isn’t an aching cry, nor an ecstatic laughter, nor a hissing grudge. Screams and moans and whispers and whimpers buzzing in the background, quieter than footsteps of an approaching passerby and I could hear myself breathing. It was a calm rain after the quake and I was standing in the midst of it.

That moment. It’s when I am resting my tired eyes and the seconds before. Fractures of trillion of seconds that made up a single moment that has parted in seasons and moons and mornings and nights. Seconds before these eyes are fully shut. Seconds before the moment releases a teardrop from each — silently and ever neglected.

Shush. It’s just another ride in the rain, a rescuing friend would say.

And another song to sing? I asked while looking outside.

I’d dedicate it to myself.

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Hello. You are now reading an article written by Marisa Duma, published on 18Nov08 along with other notes on Personal Note.
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