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Distractions




Distractions

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo


Of course, you are a ghost. I already killed you before. You resurrected, walked by towards the comfort room, and back. Your bladder still malfunctions, after all these years. Were you wondering if, it was me, your assassin, because you stood there, like you knew me? But you walked on, back to where you came from, purgatory? Unless you failed to fully expiate your sins, and you were on your way to hell.

Something in the day hides you, invisible in the brightness, visible only the night, among creatures of the dark, exposing your enormity, and the limits of my own resolve.

There, in the limitation of my senses, and the presence of your darkness, is my happiness, co-existing with fear, that you would resurrect, and I would again succumb, and kill you all over again.

I am distracted, between the knife to kill you with, and the news that Luzma’s dog had just been ran over by a car. The dog is now dead, and Luzma is distraught, as distraught as I was when you rolled over me, a very long time ago, after failing to sink your teeth on my neck. It is only because of this that I spare you, thinking that the dog sacrificed his life to put a stop to my propensity for making a career from slaying demons, that never really die.

You are a subterranean weed, whose leaves may be pulled out, but whose roots are too deep to disengage from the soil. Even when plucked out, a small remaining root can be nurtured in the dark, creeping and growing, and pushing new shoots to grow above ground. No other grass can grow while a part of it remains underneath.

I am totally distracted. Bruno, that was the name of the dog. He had experienced the thrill of escaping, a taste of the outside world, beyond his comfort zone, risking his own life. He felt the heavy wind as he made a dash, and found himself floating right above his own body, sprawled on the road, his eyes still wide open, trying to keep the last memories of his adventure, and the singular luck of suddenly staring at Luzma’s face, fading with the light, partly covered by her long hair.

It looks like life gives us the desire for the adventure into the unknown, but our survival is only possible by negating it. A hard lesson for Bruno, but a lesson I learned too early, for my own self-preservation.

Where is the knife? But you have gone.


Endings

I should have
when I could have
ended, the end of it
but he had gone
ending, my end of it.



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