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Now, that it was time to leave, a paralyzing homesickness-drenched fear wrapped its tangled thorny arms around Duma. For the longest time, her thoughts had been captivated by the notion of embarking on THE GREAT JOURNEY. She simply couldn’t resist dreaming about the addictive mystery-caped unknown which had been roaming the Earth beyond the confining clouds.
“When I was a little girl, I used to visit my grandma every second weekend. She had a small yet inviting countryside home, surrounded by orchards and green fields. It was my favorite place in the world. I remember eagerly counting the days, and then the hours, before I could walk along the citruses with grandma and hear her stories from when she was a little girl, like me. It was hard for me to imagine her so young. When you’re little, all of the adults seem like they had been born this way, right? Continue reading
This is a one-sided story of a one-sided girl, living a one-sided life, and awaiting a one-sided death. Nobody knows she is one-sided. To them, to the world, she is Leah – just another pretty brunette who looks and talks like a million others. If only it were true, though. Continue reading
The first to come was the darkness, right after coloring the night skies in dark blue. It sat down on the branch, next to the owl, and asked, “Wise owl, do you know why everybody fears me so?”
The owl fixed his gaze upon the black horizon and answered, “Unlike us, animals, humans can’t see through you; they can’t grasp you. When you can’t understand something, you fear it. That’s why they depend on artificial lights.”
“How much longer before we can eat? The pizza is getting cold,” I muttered, hoping she’d notice my growing irritation. She didn’t. I wasn’t surprised.
“I’m almost done. Two minutes tops. I have to get this selfie right. This light is too good to pass up,” she said as she stood by the kitchen window, holding her iPhone and making a kissing gesture which emphasized her high cheekbones.
Potato nose, chicken legs. That’s what the kids used to call me. I pretended not to care, of course, always chanting mom’s words in my head: Don’t listen to them, Gracy. They don’t really mean it. But there was only one problem—these kids were right. My big fat nose did look like a potato and my ridiculously disproportional skinny legs did seem like they belong on a chicken. God, how I hated my potato nose; how I hated my chicken legs. I must have been eleven or so. Even before the Internet, even before Facebook, Photoshop, and envy-inducing selfies, I felt ugly. But I never told anybody about it. I was afraid that if I say it out loud, it would somehow be true. As I grew up, something happened to me—people around me started to tell me how pretty I was. But no matter how many times I’d hear it, I never quite believed it. Because whenever I looked in the mirror, all I could see was the same old potato nose, chicken legs.
A soft whisper calls for you, caressing the sleeping night and lingering in the cool air. It must be a dream, you tell yourself, and close your eyes. But the restless wind makes its way through the open window, carrying the fading remnants of the delicate voice to your ears. Never did you hear such a tender, soothing murmur.
And in the last few years it seems as if everything had changed and nothing would ever be as it was. The silent nights have grown longer, darker, emptier.
And the darkness. The same darkness that once sang them lullabies, is now a stranger. Its heavy layers of hostility resting on the roofs of the sleeping houses, subduing them, ever so slowly, in their stubborn, thorough demeanor, separating the skies above from the dreams below, which suddenly seem so small, so neglected.
Click-clack. Click-clack. Hundreds, no thousands of hurrying feet walk the gray streets of the restless city. Together yet always alone, they march on the cold pavement. And they never stop, the people. Why should they?
You were waiting all night long for the morning to come. It will all be better once it’s morning, you told yourself. You stood there, wrapped in your blanket, and stared at the sleeping darkness outside through the closed window. The moon tried to send you one of its comforting smiles, reaching out its soft pale rays, but its efforts were in vain. It was too far away, or was it you, who was too far away?