Where Did They Go?
I'm lost, but all the maps to guide me are gone. The light in my life is flickering, the memories are all that is left. Their voices are fading, the colour of murky green stained on the carpet. The cobwebs on the perfume bottles neatly placed on the armoire in the master suite. The scent of jasmine that lingers on the bedsheets. Everywhere I turn, I hear laughter, I jump, "You came back!" but it's just in my head. They're gone. Only a glimpse of who they were is left.
I grab the torn-up blanket sitting on the armchair. Pressing the blue satin up to my nose, the scent of my father reminds me of the life I once knew. The distinct smell of cigar, resting on the blanket. I remember running through the rows of lilies and tulips, grazing through the pasture as my father sat on the porch, smoking. The slight tilt of his head as he chuckled, the one dimple on the side of his face ever so present in my mind. I remember a time when after a long day of laughter and fun an aroma of sweet butter and rosemary would carry throughout the house. I remember a time when I would hurry up to my bedroom, waiting for a story of grand adventures to whisk me away into another world. I try to reminisce upon the good times, the memories where life was a fairytale. Where the endless days of playing in the stream and gorging on pastries such as L'opera and Eclairs were a reality. Life was taken for granted, the memories pushed towards the back of my mind, making room for a new experience to fill a slot that was once taken.
Now, I try to block the new memories from making any room in my head. I don't want to remember famine, the flies buzzing on that hot summer day. I don't want to remember the tv saying there was no cure. I don't want to remember the shrills of pain that filled the house. I don't want to remember the green welts forming on my parents. How I was the only one who made it. How, for some reason, I was chosen to be a miracle. Not my three brothers and four sisters. Not mama and papa. No one but me.
