The Full Grown Zygote

There was something with life that most people failed to see. They died without even knowing the perfect words that tugged behind closed doors, the stories that sifted out carrying the smell of old, rotten woodwork, and the last pulse of sound it uttered as it slammed around the hinges. I was home. The home I had taken for granted was dark, silent as death, and sullen as clouds before a storm. The candle that I lit and placed over an ancient china desk with the old portrait of mom before their marriage  wasn’t God to fill in the black gaps that my love ones left behind them; leaving me sitting alone in the dark where no one seemed to care, or to look at. I didn’t care.

Nor to notice. Like Albert Einstein said about the importance of imagination over pure knowledge, I was in control: of what I felt, what I should, what I tasted, what I saw, what I shouldn’t. Sometimes, I just have to be more creative and convincing even to myself.  That was to be in full control of the things that could crash me into dusts within the seconds after their coming. They couldn’t… crash me.

Now, where did that leave me? This house was mine. I owned everything that my family had ever owned. I would live a life out of their prejudices, now and forever. I would do things out of their consent, and succeed out of their cheers and warm congratulatory remarks afterwards.  But missing them was an emotional luxury I couldn’t afford, not now that there’s no one I could hold on to, something soft I could pinch when something inside burned like hell.

There was silence… creeping to wards me, spreading over my head; slipping under my feet, wrapping around my torso and up, sneaking inside my nostrils,  until I was wholly covered with silence.

The night was deeper since my previous notice of time. I remembered sitting over through the line of shadow that was casted by a life-sized window behind the front door along the floor. Now, there’s nothing there but the dusts that settled, unseen against the pitch black background, living a life unmindful of our universe where every movement meant something worth thinking of. Then I stood up, clasping my mouth with the remaining strength of my palm. The other hand served as my leverage so to keep me standing in the dark, also a tool for groping my way through the kitchen, as the merciful space between my palm and mouth were filled by the pressurized air of grief and realization. I was now approaching a scalding pain. And I couldn’t bear to be in the dark any longer, but the bullet ricocheted inside the room, bouncing off the wall with an array of nostalgia, searching and hunting for the center of my soul and spirit.

Then I couldn’t hold it.

 The zygote had grown.