I Won't be Found

The things you see when you close your eyes. It’s funny how complete blindness can be so brilliant and animated. To listen truly, you don’t need ears… to feel truly, you don’t need to touch… and to see truly, you don’t need eyes…

I look around me now and I see tired red faces spouting words of anger and disgust. But I am not here to talk about them, I am here to tell you what I see… when I can’t see…

I see a hoard of people running towards a meadow lunging for the horizon. It’s so crowded at the meadow so I choose a different path. I walk away against the ebb of living and breathing mob. I fall face first on the grass below, lukewarm and moist, a result of night’s rain and morning sun-rays.

In front and all around I see giant endless plains like the elegant Serengeti, or the gargantuan Savannah, or even the Great Plains. I rise up and look around plotting the trajectory of my marathon across this plain like a youthful gazelle. And in that moment I am a gazelle, a wild gazelle with the warmth of the moisture gushing through its paws… and then I run… I force the Serengeti to disappear in my eyes, a blur is what it has become… I feel I have wandered too far away from my friends and family, they will never be able to find me… a smile is drawn across my face like paint athwart a dusty canvas… I will never be found… I won’t be found…

It is noon now, I am not tired, and I will never ever be tired here. But there is aridity in my throat; I yearn for a drink; I see a levee formed against a river. I jump rite in, there are no second thoughts here, and primal instincts are flowing like wildfire. I dive in as a gazelle and emerge out as a proud seagull, drenched and with a fat salmon in my mouth, I soar high… higher than the sky on a freeway to the stars… then I hear voices chasing me, rooks and crows and ravens as black as obsidian… familiar they all are, too familiar for my own good… they are faster I know, I will soon be found… I dig a hollow in the clouds and hide… the hideous black murder soars by me, surprisingly not noticing… I understand then, they search for a black companion… but I have turned white, seagulls are white… I won’t be found…

I breathe a sigh of relief as the murder passes, then I feel my wings receding into my skin, I take the skins of a ravaging lion, tufts of fur around my face, deer skin stuck in my claws and a deep lust for blood. Blue wildebeests scampering in a frenzy, zebras fading in a flurry of black and white, hedgehogs burying themselves beneath the ground. My mere sight instills such fear inside of them, I charge with insurmountable fervor and ardor  Feeble hearted packs of hyenas and jackals follow me closely… poachers and scavengers exist here too it seems… but a lion has no fear, a king has no fear … I mount a kopje, and upon reaching its pinnacle I unleash a ferocious roar… no fear of being found here… a king has no fear… come find me if you dare, I am the king… a king has no fear…

Then suddenly everything evaporated to a bright light… a vertigo followed… then I am me again. An older me, there a slight pain in my knee… sign of a chronic arthritis to follow maybe… shades of grey in my hair, I reach back and touch the ponytail I have still maintained… I feel sand in my feet and the comfort of a reclining chair on my back… its dusk, or dawn maybe; I cannot tell… my fingers are locked around a glass shimmering red… wine? Cranberry cocktail? Or mayhap just grape juice…

A beautiful girl of about 13-14 years is sitting by a sand castle… she didn’t make that castle, I did, she has grown a little old for sand castles but I haven’t. She is reading a book, there’s a guitar lying quietly beside her… she has my habits, but not my looks… she’s got 'her' looks, long black hair, those pristine black eyes and those blushing cheeks. I wonder if we named her ‘Liandra’, I always wanted to name her ‘Liandra’… Liandra meant harmony, something I sought all my life… she was supposed to be the answer…

I call her by that name… “Liandra”… she looks at me, puts the book down, smiles and dashes towards her mother. It was then when I notice the mother, she still looks elegant like ever. So what if her hair has a few grey lines decorating the black ones, so what her eyes look a bit weary and her cheeks marked with light wrinkles… she is still a beauty, my lioness, my garnet, my sugar and my strawberry… she smiles at me… almost saying…

We made it through idiot, we made Liandra, and we won’t be found… ever…

Both of them stood there, my sweetheart and my sweetling, my queen and my princess. It’s one of those moments when you think everything around is too good to be true... and you’re right…

The shards of this imaginarium broke, my eyes opened and I found myself staring at my colleague, he was staring rite back.

“Thank god I found you; there is some serious work that needs your attention pronto” he said.

Hell and all its off springs consume him. I thought.

“Hey” my colleague snapped, “I said ‘serious work’, be quick about it and try not to disappear this time, I don’t want to go looking for you again”

Hell and all its off springs consume him, twice over. I thought bitterly.

“Don’t worry” I said, “next time… I won’t be found”