Flawed Perfection

Chapter Two: Love and colors

11th January, 2008.
Abuja, Nigeria.

The days had walked by, each one extremely harder than the one before it. There were days in Aisha's life when she lost both the will and courage to stand on her feet. Today was not an exception.

Aisha sat by the edge of her slim mattress, covered in an old midnight blue hijab, a cup of sugarless_black tea secured in between the warmth of her fingers.

In an old_broken mirror, a light skinned face that had big_round eyes secured underneath thick brows and above a straight nose shadowing full pink lips stared back at her_ It was the reflection of an innocent twenty_one year old girl that owned nothing aside her judgements about life. Those judgements were wonky and it wasn't just a bit. Yet, who'd blame her? Those were all life had ever fed her about itself_  colors and the burning need to protect herself from it.

Colors, Aisha had been enamored of colors ever since she was little. She knew each color, in every shade, through all of it's mixtures.

Red. It was Aisha's favorite color. It gave her fair skin the right amount of glow and made her white_round eyes glimmer.

Aisha wasn't that much of a fan of herself yet she couldn't help but stare when it was red against her supple skin.

It always left a tangy scent of love she could not erase.

Love. Just like colors, Aisha fancied the idea of love and being in love. Both had the living ability to extract the beauty out of every soul and it was the danger of it all_ the attention, the change that came with both.

More than anything, Aisha hated change. Zainab had always blamed her for being too attached to everything in her life. There was the pain she over_felt, the emptiness she over_analized and the dreams she clung unto as though her life depended on it.

Yet more than Zainab, Aisha knew, she was all she had left and whatever pain she clung to, it was her's to own.

It was her's to feel. She wasn't at all selfish for deciding to deal with it all by herself.

The world was cruel for feeding souls problems even time would fail to care about. 

Cruelty was the way life worked and it had always been like that ever since her family moved in with her grandparents eleven years ago.

It was pain after pain. Loss after loss. Death after death, for Aisha had died over and over again.

    Yet, if anything, Aisha knew life would go on_ it always did.
It always will, even if she dropped dead at the spot.

"The latest bride in town. Kallamu's very own!" Aisha's twenty_five years old, elder sister yelled, snapping Aisha out of her trance.

"Oh please. Don't make me die already." She scoffed.

"Oh sweet death. Aisha do you know how long I've denied myself the pleasure of ending your life?" Zainab questioned, her gaze supposedly heavenwards, only just a tattered old ceiling was what Zainab tried to ignore.

"A couple of hours?" She rolled her eyes. "Two days?" Aisha added in an attempt to numb the pain that weighed her heart.

"No. God! You're so wrong... Twenty_one years ago, that day I came home only to meet you, stealing my mother, my spot. My beautiful sh..." Zainab spoke in between feigned sniffs. She was drama in every sense, from every corner, in it's real state. 

"I stole your shine? Geez! Ya Naaby, get over that. Please, how old are you again?" Aisha asked sarcastically.

"I was only four years old."