Sand

Channah
Channah
Sep 2, 2018 · 4 min read

“When they ask you who your first love was, don’t breathe his name, don’t whisper hers”

There are a few things that are only appealing when you look at the general idea of it;

like eating more than your tummy can handle at a buffet, like big women strutting in high high heels, like riding roller coasters, like going to the beach, like love.

I enjoy fantasizing about all these things but I detest the actions

I hate the fullness and sickness that accompanies the water down my throat,

the pain at the balls of my feet as the weight presses into the earth,

the height, the nausea and the overactive imagination,

the sand in and out of private spaces just as nosy siblings do

and plastered like magnets that only roll when you swipe resembling waterproof mascara

like getting your heart and trust wrung out like wet clothes after a wave of emotions picks you up and spits you back out on what is beneath it all.

“When they ask you who healed your heart, don’t attribute it to him, don’t credit her”

Look what the cat dragged in; that incorrigible cat, it brought sand home again

they are the sand and I’m all the things sand permeates, washing myself with the regret on my tongue

their love tastes as if it is salty water that dilutes the fantasy Hollywood forced sixteen year old me to drink

it made me sick; in the stomach, heart and head.

it didn’t usually send good morning texts or hold me in sickness and in health or surprise me with flowers or call me beautiful but it did after every brawl

it latched on like leeches do and took and took and took till the guilt and shame pulled it mid gulp and burped it an apology

when I was tired, when they were fed up

not with me but with themselves so they chased me up and down and pulled and pushed till I tasted them in my mouth; grainy

and it wasn’t like walking on eggshells because they had placed me carefully and meticulously on broken bottles lined on the fence at the beginning

I was weak, I would avoid mirrors and passive aggressively plead submission then sob quietly enough to need subtitles.

“When they ask you for your favorite poem, don’t say it was him, don’t say it was her. Say it is you. Always. It’s you”

Sands present, past and future are in constant transformation and mold around my feet like anklets

they glisten in the sun and lay like jewels if you applying enough pressure

they’ve drowned in their own water and wind and have been carried away and reappear to cause me discomfort

from the Atican to my house to Muritala airport, always in constant motion.

“People forget that abuse is damaging but its aftermath is permanent”

Loving them and loving myself less is like how fast I want to stand up from the floor in my head but my bones creak with laughter at that thought

or how swiftly I want to walk away but my legs can only make 10 steps in a minute

I wonder what the sky did with all the love I sent to it, I wonder if it squeezed it into a ball and tried to shoot a 3-pointer into the abyss

the good I did, the laughter I caused, the prayers I sent,

the ones with amen as punctuation, not for me but for them

not necessarily the ones on aching knees but the five second ones that rush in quite like wishes

My hopes and prayers similar to little particles in the air, many, like sand particles floating

I breathe them back in, like unsent emails with missing or wrong letters in the address

how Laos and Lagos are different and explains why you didn’t write me back

how the system is a mess and maybe my mail wasn’t treated as priority because I refused to pay that extra 200 naira for the fancy stamp

The one with gold but not real gold but gold based.

“Your body will heal and so will your mind but when things heal they leave scars behind”

After everything that’s happened, I’d expect to be immune to trauma

trauma might change its form but my nerves will always recognize old friends and welcome it’s children

some days surviving trauma is not enough

-because those days are pounding at my temple and bringing the flood and I just need it to end or pause

I could convince my mind to focus on doing important work but my body retaliates by mimicking those events and filling my head with the good memories, to make me cry and the bad, to make me cry

to remind me that even though it has been years and I won, I’d still ask what I won and if I really did win

to engrave with solders at the sides of my circular deep cuts that hurt and say it definitely happened because I tried forgetting.

“You owe no one an explanation, a reason, a defense for who you become after you survive”

I get a tattoo where it has healed into cigarette butt like burns on my skin, reminding myself that something happened

I came out the other side, wherever it led to and because something changed, I changed and my skin physically manifests that change

but I also hate my own scars, they’re ugly. Oh, yours are gorgeous but mine remind me of the sand that clouded my vision

that wasn’t soft enough to land on telling me that I’m not stone even though I didn’t couldn’t move when it happened

and so my love comes first like seeds after the ruins of what was my last and my scars itch to remind me to close the hole

where light, water and sand used to come through so that I never have to start again or see the end.

1st three quotes are -“Favorite”

The last three are -“Healing from abuse” from “Your soul is a river” by Nikita Gill

Channah

Written by

Channah

I write. Glorious spirit.