My sight sleeps on the ocean's floor.

Always look for the good in the worst of situation.

It's been two days and I am yet to see the good in my present predicament.

Well maybe it's because I can't really see.

Haunted all morning to take a swim, I was the first to get ready.

I was leading the flock to a destination i'm igorant of.

Finally, we were led there by someone else.

The tides were high, but I enjoyed been tossed about.

Soon I grew tired and retired from the water and was walking the shores.

They that remained seemed to be enjoying themselves and wanting to be apart of it I jumped back in.

Two lasting laughs and two overpowering tides soon left my heart bleeding tears.

I was under the water, bearly breathing.

I was searching for my sight that had fallen off my face.

But had to make a decision and fast.

Do I continue feeling for my sight and cease to breathe; Cease to exist?

Or do I leave my sight wrapped up or under the raging tide and feel my way to life?

I decided on the latter.

We stayed for hours hoping that my sight would ride home to me on the waves, but while it might have, a glimpse of it was all that was had, yet not by me.

For even though I tried I couldn't see my sight if it were staring me in the eyes.

As if to tempt and tease us, the waves octopussed it and brought it home with it..

I returned on the eve of the morn to see if the sea were kind enough to return my sight to me, but it was a sightless hope.

So here I am, two days later, mourning the loss of my sight that sleeps on the ocean's floor.

The Kiss

Just recently, my bf and I were talking about any and everything, but kisses.
However, kisses, squeezed their way through our cackles and silence and made themselves the theme of our discussion; coercing
me to blog about kisses.

Not just any kiss, but THE kiss.
The kiss differs from person to person and preference to preference.
For one, a thin-lipped, semi-passionate, suddenly started and swiftly ended kiss is IT.
For another, a full-lipped, loving, unending, lips swelling, tongue curling, saliva swapping kiss is IT.
For me, the kiss is not defined by the thinness or thickness of the lips. It cannot lack passion and must be born out of spontaneity. It can’t last too long, but can’t end too quickly either. It all comes down to what was put into and what ‘comes’ out of it.

THE kiss will etch itself onto not your lips only, but your subconscious, consciously reminding you of not just it, but its effects upon you.
THE kiss will have you wishing, wanting and comparing every other kiss to it.
It will leave a void that no other kiss can fill, causing you to be constantly yearning, craving, thirsting for the kiss even for once more.

Like love, there is no prescription that aids in the identifying of the kiss. When you experience it, you’ll know.
Have I experienced it?
I never kiss and tell!

Blacks and Books

I have one time too many heard the statement "if you want to hide anything from black people put it in a book."

And while that is sad, there is something even more depressing.

I believed.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if I was suffering from I.I - Ignorance of Identity.

I love to read.

I am always reading.

Have always been reading.

There was never a point in my life when I couldn't read; that's as far as my knowledge serves me though.

I can't say I learnt to read at age one, two or three caz I really don't know when it happened.

It just did.

Another thing is that I am black.

Have always been black.

Well, as far as my knowledge and memory serves me.

Shhhh.

Wait a sec!

I think I am on to something.

I am black and I love reading.

If there's something to be hidden from me - a black person - it cannot be placed in a book.

Unless it's in a language I don't understand and I couldn't or at least shouldn't be required or expected to read such, as there's really no point in reading unaccompanied by understanding.

Okay. So now that I have established that, I am trying to wrap my mind around why exactly I believed the aforementioned statement.

Could it be that I am among a minority that has either been deliberately overlooked or ignorantly ignored?

Or could the statement be true?

I am not in a position to opine on its accuracy or not, but what I can say is this: as far as history goes, things were hidden in books from blacks, but them not finding the hidden or reading the book was no fault of their's.

It's as simple as they were not allowed to read the bloody books.

So, ahmmm ... how else were they to have found what was hidden inside?

Did you know that, in the America for example, blacks who could read had to pretend that they couldn't?

The stop lights became their nemesis.

If they got to it and it was on green they were forced to become colour blind, as they couldn't stop.

If they did, it would've been noted that they could read and there would be no reservations in their punishment.
So what the blacks did was to pray the light was on green when they got to it and if it wasn't they just ran the light, caused the accident and then they'd be forgiven.

Why? Cause it was assumed they did so in ignorance.

I believe that blacks not reading as much as we should is all apart of our slow recovery from slavery and it's impeding effects.

Now, if overtime you've gotten used to not looking in a particular place for something because it was always out of bound; because you were restricted from doing so and harshly punished if and when you did, what exactly would you do?

Think about it!!

The 1st time.

To one person the first time means one thing.
To another, it's something else.
For some, it's absolutely amazing.
For others, it's everything but.
For me, it's nerve rocking.
There's a lot of sweating, heavy breathing and breath control involved.
It's all about remembering what you were taught and then some.
The first day on the job can never be compared to butter against sun, at least, not for me.

Starts out that I arrived an hour and a half late.
The usually one hour long drive turned out to be two and a half hours.
First, the chi chi bus stopped at every bus stop and everything that resembled such, resulting in that 15 minutes drive turning into 30 mins.

Finally, I was down town. Only to be told that I had to take a #700 to Halfway Tree and then make a transfer to a #44 which would take me to my destination.
Okay.
No biggy.

Got to the bus terminus in Halfway Tree after becoming familiar with every bus stop on the way from there to ahmmm ...
Don't remember.
No.
More like, don't know.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I told the driver where I wanted to go.
Ding dong!!!!
I only did caz I didn't know where I was going.
By the way, let me also mention that this was about10:00 or so, an hour after I was supposed to have arrived.
So, I'm sitting in the bus, wondering if the driver remembers me.
Slapping a half smile across my face I asked, "did u hear when I asked for a stop at Nationwide?"
Only to be asked, "A whe dat deh lady?"
I'm LMAO now that I'm writing, but there was everything but a smile on my face then.
I thought of crying, but what a shame it would be, so I composed myself, made a call to get the exact address, told the driver, sat up in my seat and hoped for, if not the best, something good.

It couldn't get worse.
I sat back, relaxed and waited for the driver to tell me to get off at the next stop or something, but that was just a thought; one that was not to be materialized.
At 10:30, I was sitting, still in the bus, at a cul-de-sac.
Might I add that I was the only passenger left on board.
What the hell is happening now, I thought to myself, but before my thought could have been verbalized, the very nice and helpful lady driver asked me, "Why yuh neva remind mi?"
Hellooooooooooo?
I couldn't. I didn't know where I was going.
Putting on the most faux pleasant smile I could muster up, I replied, "Caz I didn't know when or where to stop you."
"Yuh hafi guh wait bout 5 minutes."
The bus had stopped driving- parked to be exact.
I waited and waited and waited and 5 minutes quickly turned into 15.

At 10:45, the bus was finally on it's way.
"Memba mi when mi reach a di gas station. When wi reach out deh, jus seh, driva, memba mi," she made no mistake in telling me as we drove out.
By this time, tears were sitting crossed leggedly on my eye lids and lashes.
Don't cry. You can't cry I kept telling myself and then just when I thought all hope was gone, a gas station eased out of nowhere into plain view and like a child following directives given to it by its parents, I recited her words.
"Memba mi driva," I called out to her, to which she shoved her head through the window and called out to a nice, little , well I can't say gentleman for I am ignorant of his manliness or the gentleness of it, and asked, "A which way dem numba Mannings Hill road fr?"
But before he could answer, she blurted out, "A whe Nationwide deh?"

It was down the road.
How far down the road is a totally different thing.
"Di nex stop a yours yuh hear miss?"
Whether or not I responded is nothing I remember or care to.
The next stop came and on my way off the bus I attempted to tap into her creole by asking, "Where do I go from here?"
To which she responded, "Di whole a yah suh a Mannings Hill road. Walk gwaan till yuh find whe yuh a guh."
And while my being found it humourous, my flaring emotions didn't and the look on my face coincided with the latter.

After a few almost wrong turns, hi sexy girls, tooting of car horns and pssssts, I was finally there. Time?
Less than a stone throw way from 11.
Phone swinging from left to right in my hand - needed something to channel the pent up energy into- walking as briskly as I did, I dragged myself up the stairs, buzzed the door, went inside, introduced myself then sat down.

Images of what I would have wanted to do to the nice lady driver skated across my mind, but I soon dismissed the anger.
Soon dismissed the whole ordeal.
Soon I had replaced it with more wholesome, thought worthy thoughts, but that was only after meeting the very friendly, down to earth GM and the staff.
But while I dismissed the ordeal, I came away with a well learnt lesson: never blame someone else for my tardiness.

The Offering

Expecting too much, yet way too little, I can hear the expectations accompanied by their opposites ringing out of her like school bell after recess.

“Yuh mek mi look bad. Yuh is nuttin but a bloody shame nasty, dutty wukless gal. Yuh nuh have no ambition. Yuh likkle dawg,” her mother shouts.

It’s been two years, give or take a month or two and even now, it’s the picture; the only picture they hang on the walls of her artless museum.

It’s what they talk about before and behind her; the only thing they’ve been talking about, using it against her. A constant reminder of the disappointment she is.

Molested, but said naught to either of them. Didn’t trust to tell them; didn’t trust them, so she opted to unload what had been unloaded into her to the person/s with whom she had experienced trust; a faux trust, but it was all she knew.

She told them she’d been raped by the guy she’s in love with.
“Aint no wolf crying. It happened, but I soon gave in and it was no longer that,” she says.

But now, something else had happened. He had watered her soul with fluid that would soon give rise to her inside; that’d give rise to a new soul.
What would she do? What could she do? Tell them – her mother and sister- or end it? Does she take her life, putting an end to her soul and the soul growing within her soul?

No decision made. Guess she didn’t need to make any cause the guy she ‘loves’; the guy who - though married - told her he loved her too, beats her to her own suicide.
He gives.
Not support.
Not words of encouragement.
Not hope.
Not a solution, but five more steps toward the ending of two souls.

He gives her five tiny pills. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! Just that in his case – its five stones killing-slowly killing two.

Bleeding, cold sweat washes her fourteen year old body, leaving her cold and for dead. She’s dying, dying, dying then by a few mercy seconds, she’s saved.
“Your daughter is pregnant. She tried committing suicide …” the doctor said to the clueless mother. Shocked, bewildered she delivers a three-piece-combo-box across her jaws. Pressure rises then drops and a body gets rid of a soul; a soul that never was.

That was then – approximately two years ago, but they refuse to live in the now; refuse to accept or reject what happened and heal. Instead, they take on jobs as professional taunters- taunting her everyday- every second of every day- every waking moment and when she sleeps, she sees them still.

Abuse follows suit. The verbal, the physical, the emotional.
They don’t trust her. They don’t try to trust her. They make no attempts at trying to repair the trust.

Nothing she says is the truth, so she lies to satisfy their expectations.
Nothing she does is good enough, so she tries harder, yet never able to deliver the expected.

No room for mistakes, but the human in her makes them anyway and sticks, stones, pots, pans, kicks, boxes, fists, cuts, aches, pains become her mantra. Cries, cries for help, cries for help from her drowning in her mistake go out; go unheard.
She smiles and I see her tears, hear her cries.

I smile back, offering her a word that does not cease, but promises to dry her tears each time she cries. I offer her a hand to hold when she feels like running, two arms to run into. I offer her two ears that will not always be in her presence, but will always be present. Ready to listen, yet not judge, not criticize, just listen.
Unknowingly, she offers me a glimpse of her heart and I want her to keep it pure; I want to help her to keep what’s left of it pure.

So I offer - not my hand, my arms, my ears anymore; not parts of me, but me.
Will she learn to trust? If not me, my intentions?
Will she accept my offering of myself to her or not?