As I walk through a dry forest, leaves and twigs crunch under my feet. Coarse and prickly feet with blemishes and blotches. Tired from carrying around a body full of hollow cries and heavy nothingness. I walk and walk to find nothing and then I run towards green moss path. I slip and fall and get up to go again. I see a door. A wooden door broken here and there, probably leading to nought. Desperate and scared as I am, I ramble my knuckles against the door. It creeks open to a home cramped up together in a room of a wooden box out in nowhere in the forest. A cot in a corner with a baby tucked in it like a jewel in a locked chest. The mother sits on the other side of the room, nearby a stove with bubbling spinach soup. The perfect camouflage. You never know if it is a crazy week-night supper or last wish borrowed from death’s warrant. I step into the warm nest of housekeeping. I touch the cheeks of the baby with my pale fingertips. She curls and coos in peace. The mother stirs in a fog. Walls covered with dilapidated paintings and desperate stories to tell. I try to feel the homeliness. I beg the mother to spare me a cup of warmness from the stew in the potjie as old as my iron mark. The mother says, “It is not yours to remove, nor yours bear.” I scream into oblivion. I scream to get rid of this brandished arm. I scream to absorb the pain stained through the ink of the hot iron. I scream and scream to find out the baby to be in the dark of my voice. Like my fate seemed to be in the dark of my suffering.
- Oizys.