A step beyond the line

9. pray.. it will make sense

Squatting down on the sand, hugging her knees, Imani stared across the horizon with her mind blank and a heavy heart weighing her down..

The beach has been her place of solace since she moved to colombo.. it was where she came running when unable to contain the weight in her chest..

As if on cue, her mind started replaying the events of the day before on repeat .. no matter how hard she tried to block it out.. it  kept on appearing defiant as if it was on it's own mission to torment her..

Though it was an everyday occurrence for the past 18 years of her life, the hurt was as fresh as ever .. as it always was..

looking at her father after 3 months of marriage, her heart thudded against her ribcage with a new found excitement for mere seconds before it was engulfed with an all familiar terror..

A terror unreasonable for others, but for Imani it was something inevitable, something which dominated her childhood.. While the kids her age couldn't go a day without their fathers at their heels, she grew up to dread his arrival every single night.. while others lost themselves in fatherly love and warmth, an unnamed fear gripped and germinated in her fragile heart on hearing his booming voice.. gradually she got used to the abusive words and frequent slaps that accompanied them, they did sting,though  fresher and raw every single time..

Nevertheless, every night she went to bed praying with a childish optimism, that she would wake up one day and everything would fall into place and her daddy whom she adored much would be back instead of this strange man in his place who loathed her existence. but the miracle she kept looking for never came, with time she stopped praying for it and stopped hoping for such miracle to exist..

Her soul was too weak to hold onto the hate and the adversities and lament, instead she buried all aches and pains deep down the darkest corners of her heart and let go.. she hid behind every day life and pretended the other side didn't exist..

In due course, she grew rebellious in nature, she trusted and listened to none but that small voice deep down to guide her, on all endeavors thus earning her the reputation of a dissenter from all around her.. except for her granny.. who was the heart and soul of her life..

Having gone through all these, she found it absurd as to how she came to have the audacity to expect a warm word or two.. she blamed herself a simpleton for believing she would get it after all these years of turmoil..

With this, The realization that she was all alone in this wide world hit her like waves of high tide slamming against the shores .. she yearned so bad for a affable presence that her insides quivered with a deadly pain taking over herself.. Moreover she yearned for her mother, with all her might that her eyes stung venomously.. shattering away the barriers she took pain to build.. while having skated over the sticky patches for ages, her tear dam broke.. for the very first time in her life she wept, wept for all those days she slept shutting her eyes tight hoping to shut out the arguments which dominated her nights.. she wept for the days she immersed in her reading with such intensity to escape the harsh realities..for the very first time she mourned over the precious moments she would have adored in life otherwise for some selfish people.. she didn't even bothered to wipe away the tear stains adorning her cheeks..

she was brought out of her reverie when a figure slumped beside her and whispered..

" life treating you bad?"..
bewildered Imani craned her neck to look at the intruder.. she saw a girl in a pale blue scarf sitting beside her.. Gazing at the horizon with a serene look.. Imani wiped a lone tear straying down her cheeks, and hugging her knees even closer... she nodded..

" I don't ever remember life treating me good.." she sighed.. the girl cast a glance at her and and directed her eyes towards the tired rays of the sun bidding earth farewell..