Star I Found That Summer
Lit Up — May’s Prompt: Nostalgia
It is about the time of intersection of summer and rain when I am treading down this somewhat run down roadway. Hot and humid, soil dark brown, and I can’t dare to look up. I can feel my nape getting tanned even after unfolding my collar.
Finally I Find a lonely waiting shed for a relief as I wait for my ride to arrive.
Though the shed is not in a very agreeable condition with its wooden roof full of cracks and crevices and columns half eaten by termites, I can be feel little better here. Water moths are levitating around the grass and trees standing in their full bloom on sides, but I can make my peace with that.
As I mop my face with a handkerchief I notice a miniature hut made of thin wavy sticks built under a tree diagonal to me across road, it is a miniature, as if one made for a child to play with. Somewhat ruined like a sandcastle by a seashore.
It takes not long for my bus to arrive to let me off with an unfinished story of a strange view.
The next day when it is raining I am here again, needles positioned the same in my old wristwatch that a friend of mine gifted me years ago. Today there is a boy under that tree, around seven or eight, I guess, though I am not very good with guessing ages. He is remaking that miniature hut there, placing mini wavy rafters of small sticks over the top to lay a roof of leaves.
I tread toward him holding my umbrella over me. Halfway I realize that he has spotted me rolling his eyeballs toward right ear without moving his head. I halt and then slow my steps. He runs away anyway on my third step with a slippery sound through the knee high grass anyway, leaving his stuff incomplete.
It takes days, counting only rainy ones, to progress my step counts to reach up to him.
Today I am standing here in the same hour while he is rebuilding his miniature again. Seems like he has gotten used to my clumsy presence now.
I subtly pass him a good straight stick for the roof putting my umbrella propped against stem, taking care not to make him run again with this new procession.
“It’s raining again huh.” I say with a mild scoff without knowing why.
He is engaged in his business reluctant for any reaction.
“It is pretty nice what you have made there.” I take a place beside him.
Still nothing.
“Why are you building this?” I ask. My voice stammering on the first two words.
“To make the rain stop,” he answers without looking up.
It comes like a gigantic wave of surprise in my mind that it is the same thing we used to do as children years ago. That memory had almost slipped out into some unknown corner of my conscious, and today as if it has been pulled back in its fuzzy appearance out in the broad daylight. We used to build these as some kind of a pray ritual to stop the rain so we could continue to play.
“So where are you gonna play when it stops,” I inquire.
“It ain’t about playing.”
“Then?”
“So I can meet Asahi… He comes out to meet me only when rain stops. We paint stuff on paper by the winds of lake. That is our place.”
“Why when rain stops?”
“Rain will curse him to disappear forever he says. We won’t talk or paint then.”
He answers as if suppressing his voice in a mix of sadness and not wanting to reveal.
I don’t ask any further for a while but I assume it is some imaginary friend of his with whom he is running along this escape.
“What about School… not fun?”
“I can’t score high there like my big sis. ‘She is brilliant’, my head teacher says when she stares at my notebooks. Mum and Pa are angry I can’t learn anything from her.”
I couldn’t interrupt further.
Meanwhile the downpour turns into drizzle and he runs, disappearing behind shrubs and then trees.
Other day, the sun is past its peak but still unbearable to look at. I sit to wait in the shadow of the bus stop while the air loses its heat. I stare at a hole in the roof that appears like a lonesome star in a darkened sky. My eyes start immersing in an uninvited muse and my eyelids close half without my notice of it.
“I am same the age as that boy, looking out of window with a dismayed and anxious face. Pushing against the glass with my flattened palms. My drawings, that I had been carving for past year, have been set on fire. Those color-laden white sheets are turning into a black crisp as a saffron flame consumes them. Black papers crack and start flying with the wind in uneven pieces beside the silhouette of a man. With the last crumb as it sweeps past my eyes the space turns into a stark chamber filled with unbearable white flash and my eyes retract, imploding that space into that lonesome star in the roof.”
Suddenly I hear a loud horn blowing before me. My bus has arrived. As I set my feet inside the bus, I turn my head to the side to try to have a look across the road. There is that unfinished miniature again transmitting its unattended story to my half asleep mind beside the thin grass leaves striving for sun.
