Assortment of Faces

 Multiple nameless, faceless persons born from my mind

Your eyes are indifferent as your lips spew the most disgusting, repulsive sentences. Nonchalant but active, they flit from face to face, from surface to surface because you must catch the attention of whoever you can, of whatever you can. Your friends watch in amazement, in wonder, in fear, in disgust as you don’t stop. You can’t stop. They don’t know that you ate cockroaches the same way as a young boy and digested them into your bloodstream. You’re still chasing the feeling it gave you, the crunch, and you always want to replicate the scene where your mum walks in on you and screams to the Lord. She gave you honey to drink afterwards, but only your lovers see the sweetness. At night, under the warm gaze of an orange moon, your hands slide smoothly across backs and shoulders and the mouth that once consumed cockroaches now swallows gasps. It is as though your bodies are bathed in the citrus: coloured orange-yellow, sticky and sweet. Emotion suddenly fills your eyes and they stay fixed on a subject.

❦

Your braids run a river down your back. The attachment is the same colour as your grandmother’s hair, and that’s the colour you’ve used since you set yourself free from your parents. People see the colour grey and they think of the ugly curse of aging, grey hair is a sign of incoming death, a colour this unconventional and ‘weird’ must mean that you must be audacious, bold and confident. Their misunderstandings weigh on you, they bend your back. You are just a young girl, living in an apartment that looks even cheaper than it costs, trying to find a home in this country, with the hope that this hair colour will impart you with some knowledge and wisdom. You hope that when you sit on the edge of your bed with a cup of hot chocolate that you can not afford, you resemble an old woman at the end of her life, armed with wisdom and the knowledge that can only come from experience, and you hope that this resemblance would somehow make you smarter. This naivete reminds you that you are not ready to live on your own, but where do you go? If there truly is a community that awaits you, how ever shall you find it? So eager to find wisdom and knowledge, but you are too scared of failure and of lurking where danger may find you.

❦

Your eyes light up with the greed of a thousand politicians and your mouth stretches out so wide that one might believe there’s nothing you cannot consume. You take a pause to seem a bit sophisticated, your date cannot think you died hungry and poor in your past life but the truth is that you did, and another truth is that she already does. You died with your stomach deflated and your ribs prominent, your lips were peeled and your tongue was white. You had no money for food, for clothes, for medicine, for lip balm, for toothpaste. With your dying breaths, as you lay by the roadside, your eyes watched as they drove a rich man’s wife to the hospital and your soul decided there and then. Since then, the faint memory of poverty has weighed on you and dictated all your actions, there was nothing you feared more. You made sure to enjoy all the pleasures of life that money could afford and if there was any pleasure that could not be bought, you decided it was not valuable enough to chase because what is so good in this life yet no one has decided to capitalize on it? You made sure to invest in many businesses to diversify your flow of income. You engage in dodgy practices and you evade taxes because you do not understand why money must move from you to the pockets of the same government that let you die poor and destitute.

You inform the waitress that each person pays for themselves when she comes with the check and by the time you drop your date back at her house, you have been blocked. You’re confused at her behavior, but you have come to expect audacity from ugly women.

❦

The strength of your perfume has never inspired disgust or distaste. It is spicy, it is sweet, it dances through the wind with an ever-growing entourage of interested noses, but it is you that truly captivates hearts. Perfect posture, a teasing smile and you can never be caught with an ill-fitting hairstyle. There is no uncertainty in your words or your movements as you glide through life, even in your moments of embarrassment and rejection are handled with charm and grace. As you move through this unfamiliar room to find your friends, eyes flit towards you and bodies turn in your direction. When you do find them, there is a beautiful unfamiliar face amongst. You don’t even realise when it happens. Desire is an unforgiving ocean that submerges you with its wave, it defeats your senses and refuses you any control. You die beneath its power and something bordering on sinister takes over your body, but you know it is all you. Your eyes always ask the question “If I were to ask, would you say yes?” and they do.

You’re like clay under a lover’s hands, smooth, strong, malleable. You’ll fit into any shape the want. You’ll do anything they want. Just to satiate your desire, just to please them.

❦

You’re a tumbling, stumbling, rumbling rock. Unsophisticated, inelegant, clumsy, leaving crumbs falling from your person to a person too focused on etiquette and straight lines. Strong, stubborn, resilient, consistent to a person who has no use for rigid customs and prejudice, to a person just like the cashier from the supermarket. The friendship formed slowly over the past few years, from little smiles to little quips to little conversations to bigger smiles, bigger laughs, longer conversations. You’ve learnt about two relationships, one was sickeningly sugary with a bittersweet ending the other was too calm in comparison, too easy. The love was conditional and shallow. In return, they’ve seen you go through unrequited crushes and awkward sex stories.

You two smoke in the last hours of the night, after their work shift. You still haven’t gotten used to it, you burn your lap with failed attempts at ashing and you get carried away with marijuana. You always forget how low your tolerance is and get too high so you can’t be left unattended. Not this night though, this night there’s ash on your thighs and a shiver in your body that’ll leave too soon, so you’ll chase it with another cig. They’re ranting about a lazy, high school part-timer who is always apathetic to the customers, unkind. They say that unkindness is evil in a world where leaders and bosses are relentless in their ways. You counter with the possibility that their life may be a shitshow, they argue that there is never a justification for unkindness. You ponder on that, then you drop the whole lit cigarette on your lap.

Thank you for giving me a little piece of your day. Thank you for reading, and, in the chance you did, thank you for liking it.

~ M