“What are you doing here May lay boy”, he cried.
The force of his words was like a crashing wave
against my cheek. He rose from his chair, tall in yellow tee shirt, strong,
beautiful and drunk. He laughed;
‘Do you know these islands? This is not your land.’
“May-Lay”, He said it as if he owned the word and
knew nothing of us here. The sound of his slap on my face fell like a wave
across me and washed deep against my insides on its own ignorant swell. The
fabric of my being clung like canvas to my aching skin .It wriggled like a
snake within a dry current reaching for me from this day's swimming. The boy
leaned forward and slapped again into my physical world; a beat that was
meant to obliterate and strike everything from my existence. The floor swayed beneath
me.
‘Is Tibet Chinese ?’ he laughed.
The dark club beamed like a night sea. It heaved in
my humiliation. From end to end it poured its luminous opacity down upon me. My
whole body tensed. I I searched for the knife and clenched it
tightly. I could feel the smooth shine of it fall away from the paper in my
hand. It was then, with that first push in his direction that it began. I shook
off the sweat and realized that I had destroyed the natural balance of the
world, the exceptional silence of the night where it had once dwelled within
me. The blade jumped from my hand almost with a life of its own. it seemed to
make little trace at all. All I heard was a sound of laughing and crying and
then a terrified scream in the darkness.
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