“Torn Pages from My Eulogy” — A Flash Fiction by Nice Mwaura
Daddy, it has been ten years. Ten solid years of concoctions and a string of questions about my fractions. Ten years of regret. Back and forth, I can’t loathe. Sorry, I can’t help but fathom. Ten years of waiting upon each dawn and when sunset comes up it’s my tears that goes down. And I kept on looking at your direction because you told me you would be back. So that was a trap. So the gap, only a small crack became a gully and ten years later it has grown to be a deep valley. Ten years, that is what I tally.
One is for the conversation we last had one on one. Two, the howls of insults, and that knife you lodged in her chest by accident. Three is because in prison you are not free. Let’s skip to six, and who knew the malicious you had to take mum six feet deep? That you left me in grief. And I was used to sleep in the warmth of her cuddles so I had to adjust to lighting the candle. How do I explain to you that I hate you for being you? I hate you because you left and my heart is not at the left, it moved to the right and that’s why I write. I hate you because, you took everything behind bars apart from one thing: depression!
Toxicity. Masculinity. Miniscule femininity. When the relationship became toxic, my feelings became nostalgic. So life became acidic. And my pH kept on reducing till the chemistry in me erupted. I was that girl whose mother went to some hollow ground and her father went behind bars, courtesy of what he loved in the bar. Is it the fluttering, dad, I miss, or is your stench of liquor that made our tiny home go amiss?
This is not an apology. Not a letter. Just a dilemma. And I lost faith so I’ve stopped kneeling in reverence, calling on for the Son of the most High. I’ve stopped having faith in men and have faith in those men who liked it with my legs so high. Yet to date I still kneel in reverence to shove their manhoods down my throats. Deeper they shove, so I wonder, did you have to lodge that knife so deep?
Her blood, my ink, they call me tales of the bleeding pen. The last lines before are this pen has exhausted its ink. I didn’t tell you that this paper is smeared in blood and a head of bad thoughts. Cuts to my wrists. Blood on the blades. The ARV pills under the bed and a few notes from the guitar because nowadays there are no notes in my wallet. My head is screaming at you but my lips are numb, in silence and defeat. To the soil shall my body return. And when they bury, do not be left in fury. I will become the leftover of the soil that moulded me—third class material. When I am gone, bury my body not my words. These are the torn pages from my eulogy no one will ever read. That I hated that my parents were in this toxic relationship and my life was not promised.
Life stinks, and you left with my spray.
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