GRACE

“Grace be with you”


You had followed me for six months now. In every interval, Chan will tease you and ask you “So, who’s it you want?” and he will point his fingers between us, a thumps up flip turned crookedly then raise his arms up like he was praying, as if he was some god and your answer was a wish he was keen to carry out seriously. It had always made you blush, not colors creeping in slowly on a white wall but a pail of paint being poured into a face, quick like you had known the question coming but not quick enough to command your skin to hide and your face had always betrayed your heart

I had always liked your hair, the way it fell over your shoulders to stop at your waist – dark as if it was the bosom of the Night I could lose my face in, dark as if your were peace and quiet and sleep. Occasionally, I had stopped to watch you from a distance, watched your hair dance a shiny dance with the sunlight every time you moved or talked or showed you were alive. All live beings are filled with movement, muscles contracting, nerves twitching, fingers tucking in a stray hair, lips parting to show teeth and smile, a tongue made of blood and vessels, feet thumping and going up and down a staircase.

Chan had once told me that just before a body dies, it, for the last time releases its bodily fluids by contracting its bones to an impressive length.
“And then it emits this low rattle, a sound that comes from deep within the throat, a guttural cry followed by a long sigh and then an endless silence”, he’d said. He had witnessed his grandfather die.

“You mean the body for the last time protest death', I had thought about it, ‘ or accepts it”. There must be some plausible explanation that could explain this newfound knowledge

“I’m not sure if it is a form of protestation or an act of acceptance but it is scary”, It was scary because it was no daily occurrence. If death was a normal routine of waking up and brushing our teeth, we’d have gotten used to it. I told him we are afraid not with death but with the question of what happens after death, with the unknown and the unforeseeable. He agreed.

Our body is a flurry of movement when we are alive. Even when we are asleep in our bed or zoned out in our thoughts, we are of blood and nerves and muscles constantly twitching and flowing and spasming, constantly reminding us to wake up, come out and get back to life

Once all movement dies, the body dies. Maybe that’s why the final movement is a protest, a kind of denial for the truth that is approaching in the next second. The body standing up for itself without an armor, the body vulnerable and susceptible to the final shot. Or maybe, it is as simple as acceptance. The body letting itself go, falling back or down a cliff, arms spread like two wasted umbrellas, headed towards an endless silence, towards a long sigh filled with silence. Maybe it is as peaceful as that long drawn sigh

You had eyes that stood out when I was with you. If mine were clouded, it felt as if yours were unnaturally too bright for your face to contain, a kind of pleasant brightness that comes with the sun after a long week of mist and rain....