Love wrapped up in horror.
Horror dressed up as love.
How do I distinguish the two? They seem to have merged together to create their own entity. They tell me, “I am love”. But, is love supposed to crush you like this? Is love supposed to kill your spirit? Is love supposed to make you wish you never existed?
Something tells me that that is not how love is meant to be. I don’t know whose voice that is that shares this nugget of information. But I hear it faintly. So I sit here sifting through my memories of 9, Shanti Niketan. I try to find the love and separate it from the horror. I try to dismantle this entity.
As I do this, I begin to hear the screams of a shell-shocked child. A child left alone, on a barren land, with debris all around her. The aftermath of 3 lives colliding and combusting. This child has survived the explosion, but does not know it yet. This child has not registered that she has survived. This child now sits here, alone, on a barren land, and screams and screams and screams. She says she wants to find her ground, that she cannot feel her ground anymore, that she does not know where she is anymore or what time or day it is.
She lays there and puts her hand on the ground as her screams quiet down. The ground is cold, solid. Present. She puts her other hand on the ground as well. The ground feels more solid. More present. I wrap her in a blanket as she lays there on the ground, feeling it for the first time since the explosion. She tells me she is glad I am with her. I tell her I will never leave. I tell her she can stay on the ground for as long as she needs. She sits up with that and tells me she wants to write instead.
I hand her a pen and paper. And slowly her screams find the words… 9, Shanti Niketan…
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