I grew ten legs before the sea got covered up in ice. I was waiting in the sand-washed darkness when my body turned into light. That there was no light beneath the waves on top of waves, I did not recognize myself and the others did not recognize me. I only knew my strangeness. The tendrils of my heart were beating beneath my feet. When I clasped my legs together to hide the light, it turned into me, pushing my organs to the surface of my skin. And when the light touched the water, it recoiled like a bruised thing, the water drowned out my sweat in bleeding orange and pink. My blood turned blue. I was a monstrous thing in a kingdom of monsters.
When the light pulsed through my body, I did not understand how to hold it. I did what the others did to me: I tried to hide from my own skin. I built a shell within my body out of my body but the thing about light is that it always finds a way through. Instead of the light disappearing, it found ways to exit, to exist. I grew eyes, five of them, one between two legs. All rotating green orbs that saw the world as a rotating, endless sphere. Under the water, with my eyes and my light, I could see what the others could not. I could tell them things about themselves that they never thought of. Like how Bluesy, the seahorse did not know that the color of his shell changed when he was asleep. It turned a warm indigo when the sleeping waves engulfed him. That Feline, the starfish expelled a yellow fume when a perceived threat came her way. That there was a world that lay above the layer of stark darkness we were used to. And I thought that it might be a totally new world for me— one unexplored, one capable of accepting me and my peculiarities, maybe one in which I could find someone like me.
I decided to travel to it but I could not tell anyone that. They would think that I had a death wish for deciding to pass where those who could kill me resided. But I could not resist the urge to leave. The light passed through every inch of my body and changed me from who I used to be. I started looking for where to call home since the place I inhabited had begun to reject me. It started with the light and now the light was going to lead me forward. As the world around me rotated and I swam in the changing waters, I learnt to adapt. I was swallowed by a whale and I learnt to be patient within it. I was inside its body for a thousand years. I knew it was not going to digest me. It could not because of my dying blood; instead, it spat me out on a strange surface. It was a bed of light but the light was one I could not touch, yet I could feel the lightness of the sand under my feet. It was strange to witness that the absence of water was replaced by space and, in that space, an emptiness returned to me. My light was dispersed in that space. It was no longer mine. It belonged to the world. The water that bent around me was nowhere to be found. Then I learnt of another boundary. It was a silent moving sheet that changed its mood from white to blue to pink and orange, and finally dark. But its darkness was not ordinary. It was filled with many sea urchin-shaped lights. And a bruised sphere of sometimes golden, sometimes white light. I saw in it my own self, the changing nature it had. I wanted to be like this thing but I did not know how.
This new world did not give me much. I missed how water could reach every inch of my skin and how it bent in the presence of my radiance. Here, I was still not good enough for this world, staring at the white sheet above, hoping I could be like it, without its weight but with its aching freedom. I yearned for further transformation. I wanted my wings. I dreamt of wings. But all that came to me was the sensation of falling. A feeling I was not used to while floating in the silent waters. I would later learn about the weight of air. But to experience air meant I needed to understand what sound was. That it was a heavy thing, like a body trying to exist; it was a carving out of space. I learnt that to gain my freedom, I needed to be willing to bear the sound of the earth itself as it pushes down on everything. It pushed and I pushed back, then I grew my wings, the five of them. I was not an angel, neither was I a bird. I was a flying falling thing trying not to break under the great weight of the world. To exist as a thing that was unrecognizable meant that I was perpetually lost, that I was perpetually in loss, empty and carved out of hunger. That the hunger spread as I grew. That I longed to return back into the water despite knowing there was no way back. None that I knew of at least.
I needed to hold on to that hunger as long as my body would feed, knowing I was a changing thing, lusting for everything. I did not know how fire would change me but I learnt of its beautiful terror from the sun. When I flew too close to it, I could sense its readiness; its hunger was like my own, its fears resembled mine and its loneliness was a cold flower hidden within its heart. I had kept all my coldness within a shell I built, trapped under the icy seas where I learnt how to breathe. The ice was broken by the suddenness of my ache and the timeliness of it. I wanted to stretch my legs out of the water that shamed me, instead I returned with my heart set on fire.
I lost five wings before the sky set on fire. I was flying in the enormity of the cloud-permed light when my body grew a shadow. That there were no bodies of sand in the air on top of air, I did not recognize myself. The others did not recognize me. I only knew my limitlessness. The tendrils of my heart were lost in the wind. When I opened my wings to fling out the shadow, it burst into me pulling my organs together in a fold. And when the darkness touched the air, it spread like a wild thing exalting itself in colors of orange, blue and pink. My blood turned red. I was a tender thing in a world of fragile things.
About the Author:
Rafiat Lamidi is a lover of art, a poet and photographer who resides in Nigeria. Her works have been published in Lolwe, Isele Magazine, Olney Magazine, Lucent Dreaming, Acropolis, The Blood Beats Series and elsewhere. Her short story was shortlisted for Awele Creative Writing Trust. Her twitter is @rauvsbunny.
Isele Magazine 