Kiana

It was a lazy day spent hiding behind memoirs, essays, and diaries compiled into a book. Three hours into waking up, I tiptoed around the kitchen and steamed bitter gourd in preparation for an omelette for breakfast and lunch. Since I don’t drink instant coffee anymore, I spent the morning stretching and screeching in my bed as I leafed through page after page of the greatest things ever written. Time and again, I stopped to take a breath—a side-effect of being utterly involved in one’s reading—and paused to wonder when will I ever not be surprised and enthralled by words put together with ease, gentleness, and charm. The repairs are still going on around the house. The walls are all a-jumble, a disarray of discarded old plywood with flower and puppy stickers pasted all over. My headache intensified as the day wore on.

I went out to run some errands under the glaring 3 PM sun and daydreamed of the time I recently had at the beach, where I jumped off a cliff, hesitant and frustrated at myself, and landed on my butt in the water. For a little context, the fall lasted approximately three seconds. On the fourth second, I felt a pain so sharp in my upper legs, but thankfully managed to swim still in the deep, terrifying, muted mint green sea. I remembered loving the color of the sea right from the minute my friends and I laid eyes on it; it was milky, muted, and not the intimidating blueness of most seawater. However, when I was up the steep cliff trying to initiate myself into jumping and just for fuck’s sake doing the thing, the muted mint green sea seemed to balk at me for having a brain that overthinks—an encumbrance. For context, the fall only lasted thre seconds, but I stayed brooding up on that steep cliff for about an hour, not afraid but frustrated at myself for thinking, thinking, thinking. In the 59th minute up on that cliff, I asked friends who were waiting for me on the ground to count to 10 as a cue for me to jump. Nine seconds into the countdown, I propelled my whole self into the dark nothingness of thin air. Wisps and whispers. Kiana, what have you done?, I remember asking myself, two seconds into the freefall. Splash…gravity worked like god’s mercy and I’m on earth again gasping for air. Then, the pain in the legs, and then, holy shit, swimming for dear life. ♦