Riverbank

I sat by the riverbank, half dried up. Half the trees were straw yellow and bare. It hasn’t rained in three months — dry season. I sat and watched the sunset over the hill. The air feels so wide, for the first time in awhile I felt like I could exist again. Being tied to this place, this town with its hardness, it felt hard somehow. I feared having a soul, being seen. A girl, teenager, came and sat near me a few meters away. She watched me for permission or approval. She seemed relieved somehow. I was there for awhile trying to write and wrestling with some good and bad feelings. When I started to pack up to leave, she prepared to leave as well, then followed behind me on her bike as we merged onto the road. I realized she wanted to watch the sunset as well, in that country road where no one went. She wanted some kind of permission, some safety from me that it was okay to be there, to exist in that way, as a person who is alone, apart from the crowd, doing nothing of importance.

I feel the stifling weight in the heat of day after day, without rest. the cold water from the shower is warm as well. When the men look at me a certain way, I go home and feel it too. I stay busy and go to sleep when it gets dark so I don’t think about it so much. The irony of coming to a bound country to be free. The women are bound in all directions by the territory of home, by men, and the men are bound by each other, drinking together with the other men after work, littering the jungle with beer cans that stand out with their black and yellow eagle emblems. Symbols of freedom crushed out of shape. They watch each other and try not to show weakness or emotion. I ask myself what I am afraid of and I feel as though I’m not allowed to say. Who am I to create without an audience, to stand alone in a lonely place?