Prose | Cold

Words by Kanya Viljoen. Image by Dave Mann.

Cold. It is fucking cold. Early winter’s morning and it’s pitch black outside and you need to get up and go to school kind of cold. The first time you walk into the Cape’s ocean and your spine remembers where it rises kind of cold. Fingers folding around air to play at smoking, grass frosted to glass, evenings where fire and wood sits without sound. Cold. It’s cold and it’s pouring down and I can’t see because it’s dark and late and we’re on the edge of starting and it won’t leave me won’t escape me and I can’t can’t get there because it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter how long or far or hard you run the point, start-end, keeps moving, moving ahead, beyond, away from your reach and I’m running because it’s just around the corner and it won’t leave me and I’m running because if I can just make it there on time things can continue moving we can continue and I can’t see and the sun doesn’t want to rise and my legs can’t carry me further I’m unfit too much to drink head pounding away running away not that it means anything because I am still here and you and I can’t can’t get out I can’t get out the car’s handle won’t allow and it’s cold and my fingers can’t remember what it is to unfold can’t remember touch to touch to take to feel because somewhere the beginning and the ending got confused, lost, dissipated to… nothing. I want to be seven again nestled in sleep and it’s difficult to wake up for no other reason than it being too dark and cold, but it’s okay because my mom has taken my school clothes and warmed them at the fire and everything will be wrapped in simplicity and it won’t leave me, escape me, won’t leave keeps turning around, pouring down and I can’t see and I don’t know how to breathe in and out in out in out I don’t know how to gather breath I don’t to breathe in. It’s cold.

Kanya Viljoen is a theatre- and film-maker from Cape Town. Currently, Kanya is completing her MA in Theatre and Performance.