BIRTH

i, I AM COLOURFUL AND FULL OF NOTHINGS

Day one wasn't that hard. After the doors slammed on my face, I occupied myself in my little corner - my room. I ignored the hundreds of messages buzzing my phone in the group chat I had muted. I stared at the butter-cream coloured wall across me with bitten lips and beaten eyes. A broken bleeding heart beating alive in my blood-soaked hands. The time ran a marathon past me. And I sat there numb. The leaving was so loud and echoing even after they had left many hours/days/years ago.

Day two was cold. The coldest I had ever experienced. I got rid of the sweaters that no longer brought warmth. (They never belonged to me. Nothing is really ours.) I collected the five sweaters - all of them black and white - like our souls; the absence of us in us - and dumped them on the ground in my backyard. I lit them on fire. It was six in the evening. And my neighbour watched me quietly as the smoke and ashes of the things I couldn't ever call mine - because I can't have what I want to have - soared in the air. The purple crepuscular backdrop dropped to an inky colour. The neighbour was long gone. I waited until the remaining ashes were swept away. I stood there longer as the red flames dissipated from blinding my vision as the anger I had built towards myself slowly evacuated my heart.

Day three arrived without a sound. The tiny details, remnants of moments vanished away like the glass particles (a glass bowl slipped from my sister's hands) that mother cleaned up from the floor the other day. Swiftly. In a hurry before one of her children (or herself) stepped on the shards and wounded their soles. Mother wasn't aware of me holding my heart in my palms. She couldn't hear me weeping inside my head. Mother picked up the laundry from my room with a shrug. I was motionless. I wasn't crying oceans for people who couldn't carry the sky for me.

But she knew I wasn't going to be the same.

So she asked me to leave my room. I didn't ask her why. I haven't any idea what she did. But when I returned to my confinement the air wafted of me - less of sadness; less of those who left me behind. The bed covers were changed - to red with intricate white patterns on it. The previous one was old and plain for her. She sprayed something akin to musk in the corners. For a moment spring was growing at my feet.

Mother looked me in the eye and told me that this wasn't the end of me. That this was just a head start for me to choose love wisely, in the safest places. She couldn't see the grief weighing me down, but she believed in the change sitting in the living room. She believed I would fight through this. I started to believe in myself too. And then I set forth looking for it.

Day four was an empty day. Like a blank canvas on an easel prepared for a fresh coat of beginning. Clouds hung down the pale sky like pink candy floss. Light. Airy. I wanted to hop from a cloud to another just to know if I was worthy enough for the sky to hold me. But I was stuck on this earth. So I let it do all the carrying. For a while. Until I was strong enough to carry it. I put on my sunshine-yellow sweater I had forgotten to the hilt - which was shocking because I found this piece of clothing buried beneath a horde of black, white, grey, brown, nudged and elbowed by a set of red, deep sea blue, and glaring purple. I didn't remember buying it. I bought chocolate ice cream on a waffle cone from that ice cream parlour I never heard of. It was a congratulatory treat for surviving.

On my way back home I caught something miraculous in the sky. I didn't know if my eyes were doing tricks or not, but above me, I saw the clouds bloom and swirl and change from bright pink to yellow to a golden colour of the sun. Then they dripped down and rained down on the streets. I ducked down, the chocolate waffle forgotten, and ran. I ran and ran and ran until my feet couldn't push any farther. I was bleeding colours.

I got home carrying a body of a palette. I looked like a canvas myself. And when I glanced back on the road I came from, I saw that the day was as empty as I had felt it when it began for me. And that the sky was pale. And the clouds hung like pink candy floss. My mother asked me why I looked so flushed. Asked if I was scared of something. I asked her, 'Can't you see I'm showered with colours?' And she told me, 'Go and rest well. You've had bad days that need to be discarded.' My heart thumped, and threads of colours webbed around my mother's slim waist, hinting at me what I think is the obvious: that it was all in my imagination. My mother wouldn't see what I saw even if I dared her to. I climbed onto my bed, and the colours blanketed me.

If I wanted it, I could either make the world die or stay alive for me. People can leave. People can stay. They can take a merriment of moments with them, or leave them with me if they got nothing to do with what they shared with me. But if I wanted the sky to bleed, I would make it happen. I could swim with whales. I could grow a field of grass. I could bid farewell if I had to.

I could begin again. So I did.