Bruises of Risk

Fantasia

            “Remember that he only says things to hurt you because he thinks you’ll hurt him if he puts his walls down. They’re not always true.”

            I stood up straight. Zarie had warned me, and yet, in my hurt, I’d totally forgot what she’d told me. My eyebrows stayed crinkled because there was still a question that had stayed unanswered. Why?

            Falling back down with an exasperated sigh, I continued to stare at the whitish lavender color in front of me, hoping that somehow the answer would make itself clear in the sky, preferably written out because that’s probably the only way I would actually understand what’s going on in that irritating man’s head.

            I let my head roll to the side, trying to put off what I knew was coming because I had to think and I didn’t want any of that time wasted, but I gave up and watched my hand shake, beads of sweat forming. I felt them form on my forehead, too, and felt them roll off one by one. I could hear them splash on the flower petals under my hair along with the wind rushing through my ears. My attention went back to the sky but I wasn’t expecting to see the sky in its purple haze; I couldn’t see anything but swirls of motion, as if I was still running. The surreal feeling of disengaging from my body soon followed and I knew I was only seconds away from another vision, and I wish I could tell what color my eyes were morphing into.

            Shutting my eyes, I tried to recollect my brain to be prepared for what I would see when I opened them, and to focus only on the piece of information I would be given. Everything felt like slow motion when I took a deep breath in and exhaled, feeling the hair plastered to my face come loose with the breath. When I opened my eyes again, everything was quiet and very dark.

            “You know I have to leave,” I heard a voice whisper, and I saw a silhouette of a woman illuminated by the street light coming in through an open front door of a house. I was inside the house and I saw the way her light brown hair lit up and the way the golden light made her skin golden, along with the one eye I could see that was trying not to shed the tear contained in it. There was something very familiar in the way her eyebrows crinkled and the way her mouth was set. I tried looking across to see who she was talking to, but all I could see was darkness and for some reason, I couldn’t move from where I was seated on the ground.

            “Why can’t you take me?” Another voice came, a teenage boy with a sweet voice. A teenage boy that was trying not to cry.

            “Honey, I want to, but you know I can’t.”

            “No, mom, I don’t know why you can’t.”

            There was a pause, followed by a long sigh. “I can’t tell you, but you will know one day.”

            “But he’ll kill me,” the boy’s voice broke as he couldn’t hold in the fear he felt anymore, and let it leak into his voice as an empty plea for his mother to take him with her.

            “He can’t kill you, sweetheart,” his mother tried to reassure him. Who were they talking about?

            “But he can hurt me, and he will. He already has so many times before.”

            “That’s why I have to leave, baby. I can’t keep living like this,” she sounded tired, thoroughly done with her experiences.

            “And yet you can let me keep living like this?” he whispered harshly, “What kind of a mother are you?” He sounded like he wanted to yell, but didn’t, because of some restriction I didn’t know.