Escape

I was timing my breakaway
of thoughts piled high
over guilty ideas
in the blink of an eye
in which I was trying to define myself.
…near, far
among the waves of karma
which seemed to have already crossed my path.

I wanted to run, to hide
somewhere beyond the skies of a red sunset.
I was afraid of myself,
of what I would have been able to commit
in a projected tomorrow
dirty over the fine lines of adolescence.
I was worried I would have succeeded
in dancing the tango of liberation bizarrely with death.
As I once heard in a sad story,
in response to the challenge of reality.
Husband stabbed by wife on wedding night.
Deceiving serpents coiled themselves
the whispers among pieces of thoughts.
But I was telling myself other stories,
in which the innocent little girl
had sealed the refusal to the climax,
leaving his body breathless,
strangled between rags
and blind prejudices,
releasing her soul to an “I don’t-know-where”.

We were taught that this is how it should be,
that our joint aligns community order
in a way that harmony perpetuates itself.
In the wisdom of the white hairs,
the elders knew best how to arrange
the pieces of this puzzle called “marriage”.
Of all the dominants,
power, influence and money,
they played doubles among the variants.
Yet, among them, the luck was dancing
Hand on hand with apathy.
But no one was interested
in seeing if joy found its bed
between the arrangement rows.
Not even if the emotion was nearby.
Cupid hadn’t stepped yet among borders,
and love in its pure essence
was ostracised from mature conversations,
being still considered a taboo,
which they didn’t want to mention.
In return, however,
love slides steeply into debt.
“Good children obey their parents.”
It’s a far too worn and abused cliché.

I could feel the anger paralysing me,
leaving a thick curtain over my thoughts.
Unsuspected powers had then overwhelmed me
in a desperate attempt to find an escape.
No, I couldn’t accept it like tomorrow,
to be the “bride” of a stranger.
I felt betrayed by fate
in its attempt to steal my identity.
A betrayal that transforms me
into a valuable object of strangers.

In the shadow of thoughts
my parents’ voices echoed loudly,
reminding me how relentless it could be
the paths of life in trial
to free them from the yoke of prejudice.
I wanted to catch flowers of gentleness
on the way to spend my mornings
and the evenings in the embraces of the serene smile,
to understand the universe through the lens of humanity.
But we limit them
to what we know through the eyes of our reality.

I don’t remember very clearly
how the hours passed that evening.
I had decided to change the face of things,
to refuse the betrayal of destiny categorically.
The red sky beckoned me
like an enchanted fairy.
An invisible magnet, it seemed to attract me more and more
to the idea of suicide.
I had started talking to myself about courage.
To hold its hand in the waterslide.
And then everything became dream and light.

I woke up after a month.
That’s what I was told.
A car had hit me hard
while my uncoordinated escape
threw me into the maelstrom of the road.
An ambulance then rushed me to the hospital.
The doctors saved my life,
but not the right leg.

I was shyly beginning to remember
sequences of existence.
But one day, I would understand
that I had betrayed the family’s interest
and that had cast a dark shadow over us.

Twenty years have passed since then.
With treason at hand,
at the parents’ insistence,
I left their home
but I held hope by the hand,
for a wiser tomorrow.

I finally met it
and now things are settled
Calmly nicely.

Last night, I was on call
and I understood for I don’t know how many times,
how the circle of life austerely follows its course,
letting its weight be influenced
by the prejudices of reality.
Last night, a teenage girl
wrote about the same story strip.
We saved her life,
but not the right leg.

Image Pixabay