Riled Restless

By Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga

No. No it’s not easy to let go.

My hands stop typing, stare at the desktop background: a distant city in radiant mist.

No. No I have to move.

Undulating pain protests. Crumpling thoughts inhibit neurons from sending clear signals.

No. No it’s all in my head.

I close my eyes. The heart insists. All it can do is insist on knowing. It must know.

No. No you’re obsessed.

The pain implores. An answer. An answer and it’ll abate. It’ll dissipate.

No. No.

Distracted, thoughts fly off the screen. The open pages, the pen, the notebook, the words are clouded in a cascade of pleas upon pleas that itch like fleas: what’s her name, what’s her name, WHAT’S HER-

I stand up, walk to the entranceway, put on my shoes, no socks, open the door, close it slowly behind. A slight creak of my escape and I’m free. A wave of hot air greets me down the slope, though the stars are frigid shards. Perhaps that’s why there are so few, melted by the urban lights. And yet the streets are shadowed, rustling trees whispering secrets beneath them. I stride on, silent, listening, or trying to anyway, since flames roil up like bile that I stifle with tightening fists. I must know.

Exhaling, I ascend another slope, feeling the back of my thighs strain as I look towards peak paradise. In no time I emerge onto the vantage point, sit on its boulder and contemplate the twinkling land. So dim. So lively yet dim. Faint yellows and reds and oranges, so fake. So-

I open my mouth but hold back the scream. Better discuss calmly.

What’s the matter? I ask myself.

He has a new girlfriend.

It’s not like you like him that much.

I like him enough to have invested a lot in him, to have continued investing in him following the rejection, so that there’s backlash now.

You’re better than this.

Keep asking me questions.

Why are you here?

“I don’t know,” I sob and hold in another.

Why are you upset?

He won’t tell me her name. You’d think he’d give me a name, something to hold onto, to remember, to support.

Why won’t you let this go?

Because right now, it seems like the only way I’ll gain peace.

Silence answers. God knows how long I sit still, waiting, watching the dying night bleed navy. Suddenly, a flash of light. I jump up and quickly deflate upon realizing that the floating red is an airplane. The white flash is but a waning flicker.

Pathetic, I realize.

Hanging on to a doomed story, I have scratched out and scrawled in new starts, new ways to hold on. This time, I take the pages, rip them apart and throw them to the cobalt horizon.

Screw this, I decide. Screw it all.