Ordain

Manka Part 1

Yesterday I said that I wanted to die. I do not know why I said it, but the words tumbled out of me like an infliction. I said these heavy words to a stranger, a woman I had met a few times at the university administration office. I knew her, but not well enough to confess such darkness in broad daylight.

I am sick. I am twisted. I fail at being everything that I am meant to be because I am flawed.

I went home broken, without the graces of hope, hollowed and confused. All I wanted to do was crawl inside my bed and hope that all fade away. I wanted the abyss... that which lays lost beyond the ether. I want that which I cannot get in my current state.

I slept early, the hour of seven when the sun was gone and the moon was shining. At this early hour, I found myself in the deepest slumber. I had a dreamless sleep but woke too soon after only three hours. I pretended I was not hungry and lied some more when I texted a friend and told her that I was interested in her new affair.

She is a chronic disbeliever, and I believe that a belief in something is the key to our existence.

I slept again after forced interactions and shy goodbyes. I slithered through to the unknown and soon all was unwritten. All that I knew disappeared save for the face of my mother and a faceless Sagumi. She is my best of friends.

Her name is Sagumi Makena. I dreamt that Sagumi had died and that she lay in a wooden casket. It was in a brash brown and had no adornments of any kind on it, it was as plain as death itself. A dull decrypt to whom Sagumi was. She was a flower, a night flower. One that shone in the night, brightly competing with the stars.

I look around me and here with us are endless faces sitting in the shed with me, just my mother, myself and these faces.

How could they lay her, like this, in this sunken place?...

***

It is a place in the bayou, I can smell the wetness, it is all around us. The air is stale and flies beat about the spaces in between the wood that shine the slightest of light into the shed. The walls of the shed are covered in mold. How could we say goodbye to her this way? This is wrong.

I want to burn the place down. A fire! Sagumi told me countless times that she wanted to be cremated.

They start to read her last rights are read in a shed where life itself lacks. What happened to church, and to hallowed spaces. I walk out as they read her last right. It comes in the form of a prayer. I run as the voices fade away and a second set of steps trails mine up into the woods.

My mother followed me out. We watch the shed from the woods.

"Mum, she said she wanted to be cremated."

With a sigh, "It's not our place."

"But mum, where are her people? They should be here." My mother hands me a bottle of water. I receive it sluggishly.

With sudden but brief anger, "No!" she moves forward towards me then whispers, "Usiseme hivyo," [Don't say that] "then your friend will not rest."

I shut my yap. I look down at the shed and seconds later, am awake.

***

They say that if one dreams of another's death, then they are bound to live a relative forever. Is this true?

***

My university started a holiday program that catered to short term students. These were six-month fellowships that required students from diverse areas of learning to come together in an effort to diversify existing job group definitions in general fields of study, simply put research on the part of the university and crush-program learning on the part of the student. Win-win!