Death.

You know it’s not there, but it’s there. Like the wind, it’s here…

Like when we were at school, our teacher tried to explain the different algorithms. You could add an infinite number of zeros at the end of any number. One thousand billion, you can add twelve zeroes at the end. Like on Facebook you could discuss the death of anything twelve times, until you’re seizing and out of breath. You can touch upon the twelve zeroes the way one touches a ray of sunshine, a ray of light. Or touch a pen, sometimes a scooter or motorbike or perhaps a pair of earrings for your wife, in nine nine carat gold. 

But in the end the answer was never there in the first place. You’ve heard nothing. There’s nothing there, no nothing at all.

You reach out and touch it, a sudden death. And it opens up like a black hole. It is your grave.

You know that a million is nothing compared to a thousand million billion. Just someone’s teardrop and it’s done. Like the moment the light blinds you. You understand that there’s no one out there who could discern the image of a dewdrop, we are all blind to the person or horse lost, fallen out of a stinking pen. 

Death. It is the clarity in all things.

It blinks as you adjust the time according to the light. Like the colour of dusk in place of dawn. It is fearless. It is calm. I will never spill a word. Because it had reached its hand out and pulled someone out of a swamp.

You asked: Where is this place? Death, its eyes are green, innocent. Nod its head ever slightly to one side, before it answers you: Here.

You wade through the water barefoot, your toes digging into the sand leaving behind your mark(what’s left of you). The green eyes signal you to a place where the waves will turn up, washing away what’s left of you. You approach it and watch it wash away your footprints, giving way to a new soft and smooth patch of sand. The green eyes are insistent on you going ashore.

Followed by a rising wave, not only the footprints but the waves shall carry you away. It is death, asking you: Fine right? Soft and easy, yes? You answer by nodding your head.

Followed by this lesson:

From somewhere out at sea, there’s a giant bird. The bird’s eyes are radiant with hundreds of colours. More precisely, thousands of colours. Perhaps it’s angry, it barely escaped a vicious fight over a meal. Perhaps it’s injured. It wants to land on your shoulders, with claws coming out of nowhere. You hold your breath. In the sunlight, the bird draped its wings over the sandy beach. An explosion. The sky explodes like fireworks. Scares the hell out of you.

One more lesson, yes?

You thought, all you need to do is love the sea, but people love their country, hence no one has the time to stop and close their eyes and come up with questions regarding death. They want everything to be clear.

You see the moon appear next to the sun. Stars dangling from various clouds. Rays of sunlight through the darkness, shimmering on the surface of the water, shapes the horizon. You lift your hand up to shade, your eyes and those all around you, to preserve the integrity of the brilliant fresh colours. Since you know that the rainbow is the feather of a bird. Whatever comes from a bird scares you. It nearly killed you. And you get it, you understand.

The sea is not just beaches where the waves erase footprints. The sea is alive amongst two crashing waves. And we must try to note what we can on the sand, fast enough so others can read it before it’s erased. 

We are the fractures amongst the colours. Each colour is a race of people. A rainbow is not a rainbow if it lacks the colours. 

We can not fade. We are brilliant with thoughts and ideas. Regretful with redemption. We leave our mark and the sunlight shall be fire that will burn us into ashes. Hence, we must choose the heat of our indulgence. We must leave our footprints so all may see.

Death blinking – its eyes are still green and sinking soundly to the very bottom of the sea. 

It wants you to stay quiet. When it opens up again, it is when you return to the classroom. You stare at the school board full of old men, their hair peppered with grey like stars amongst the mesmerising darkness still fresh in your mind from the night before. You rub your eyes staring at the colours seeping through the numbers. The bird is not there, but its eyes light up everything in the room. You know everyone is on fire. Because of the hate. But your teacher deliberately used the wrong terminology, instead of the word death he wrote the word done, like the seconds between one wave and another. When the wave is erasing the mark, the teacher must rewrite it and fix the mistake. As he pointed at the blackboard, tried to teach you how to spell the correct word, you said: “I promise you. I won’t be able to remember it. I can’t deny or confirm anything. It completely slipped my mind and my imagination had run away with me. I’m sorry…”

You opened your arms wider, to embrace the sun. 

You reached out and pulled down the stars. The shimmering lights returned tenfold in everyone’s eyes. You see them woven back together like the way a poet sees the grass woven together to form the horizon with a sudden question: “I wonder, how one human lives with another?” No one answered that particular poet.

You know each grain of sand will forever remain silent, the seashells are shiny in the burning red light of the sun. You say: “I will,” you mumble: “I will,” you say awkwardly: “I will,” while everyone is a bit confused: “You will?” Who, who will? Who will never will? Who? No one. The bird just smiled and shrugged its shoulders. 

You forget that only in death will you get a death in green. You live in a country in red, even the wind is red. She opens and closes her window each afternoon and knocks on your front door. Outside, even the sound of the traffic is in red.

“Can you make me in red?” You asked. 

But the question is redundant. She said: “Here, even the rocks are red, like the moon and all the birds flying in the sky are red, like the sea is red as the waves bubbles with blood after a barrage of three ships took over an island.” But you alone together with three stars, they have yellow in them. You smiled, since all there is to it is to eat in the evening and let it out first thing the next day, so what’s the point of her giving you a star?

She intently listens to you, but she does not answer. She lets her hair down, also in red. She is happy with her hands opened and ready to receive the buoyant breeze in red. She understands that even the mud is red, like her period.

All the colours are in red, she said: “You should keep it all safe in your heart. Only you can stop them from swallowing me, hold me in their throat. Also in red.”

—

September 2023