bohemian
“The daily exercise of suffering gives one the gaze of an abandoned dog and the colour of a ghost.”
The girl met three clusters of people on the line from Morocco to the United Kingdom. What are we working with? She had asked of herself. She did not need to invoke her guides; the darkness was not so strong that she needed support. She had woken to the sound of the sun—silence—and filled her body with its light.
In the first cluster, the girl encountered an entourage of men in a dark yellow and black taxi. The car was without seatbelts and had a cracked rearview mirror. The younger men bolstered themselves with loud voices and punctuated the air with their aftershave. The girl had sat quietly and absorbed it all, watching the driver in his soccer jersey and light glasses. He laughed kindly and stirred the conversation. The girl had slithered to the front seat when she felt there was no one else with them. With the windows down, she felt the wind move through her and filled the car with purple light as the driver shared his pain.
The second cluster appeared as two young women with false accents across their skin, eyes, nails, and chests. One woman wore hot pink and settled once she’d pronounced her suffering in more than a monosyllable. Like a horse, the other woman flicked her hair back and forth and kept her eyes on the dirty floor as she told her story. They peeped out from their gross feathers and smiled when the girl told a joke to break the din of noise in the waiting room. The girl looked out the window where the sun was setting and breathed in the lavender clouds. She sent the women purple light and wished them well on their journey.
A final cluster presented itself on the plane. A nurse with dark eyes and long curls in loose waves across her shoulders. She was with her elderly parents and older sister, who was also a nurse. The sky was black, and the sun a red streak over the dunes. The girl sat and sent whispers to her heart. She needed support for the final thrust; she was a little worn out. The flight was four hours long and the younger nurse filled it with her grief. The girl wanted to reach across the narrow seats and hold her, though she kept her hands to herself. Palms up on her thighs, she sent a soft green light to the caretaker and breathed in her sorrows as she spent herself without shedding a tear.
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