Memory lane picks up on a slow Wednesday afternoon and I melt into an acrid puddle. The sobs stuck within my ribs press against my heart, almost as icy as the blade… in my fingers, in your hands, in the tangle of our limbs and in the weariness of your furrowed brow.
Indigo – much like the skyline as it meets my skin everywhere you touched. Indigo like the sound of blood rushing through bursting veins, in my temple but not nearly enough in my lungs. Like your fingers around my throat and the heavy silence of the walls closing in on strawberry tongues as they crash. The wine trickling down my throat as I swirl into shades of midnight battling an infantile moon.
Like chewing on words that nestle in my stomach as I hug the nausea tight… lest she surfaces. Lest the words erupt from my throat like cotton candy kissing vodka flames. Like projectile vomiting in the alley past 3am with his scent over every inch of me. Indigo like how I froze under your gaze and never really thawed. Like 11 years of breaking my own bones because that’s all I’ve ever known. Because that’s all of love you ever shared.
You deadpan stare from across the room and I almost catch the light. I stare back but the mirror won’t look my way. Indigo in the way I fade, in the way your bruises hide under layers – mine or yours or ours. Indigo as we collide. Indigo as we pirouette in the shadows, caught in a dance, trapped in this trance we call kinship.
I think of you as often as the moments spent in your light. I don’t quite know if you’d be proud or ashamed… or if you’ll ever find out. Or if you’ll care. Or bother. Or cross uncharted territories in search of loss. I disappeared like sand grains unclenched in a fist as the wind picks pace. I faded away and so did the indigo maps etched onto the canvas of my flesh. I still wait for the day the carvings across my heart entwine and bridge the pieces you broke. I will paint them solid gold. And when indigo and gold kiss to birth chestnut hues, I will emerge from the night. I will no longer don the robes of a warrior. Or survivor. Or daughter. Just human.
Ghada Ibrahim is a Psychology graduate, who works as a digital marketer and creative lead by day and pours into books and all things literature by night. She’s a home chef and an avid traveler alongside being a writer. You can find her work in Jaggery Lit, Mad in Asia Pacific, and a plethora of blogs she unfurls her thoughts into. Her most recent work is set to be published in the “From My Window” anthology. Catch her hopping cities and collecting stories wherever she goes.