The Road
By Boipelo Seswane.
Reoratile stared out the window.
They had been on the road for an hour or so – at least, that is what it seemed like with the sun beginning to dip low in the blue dusted with wispy, ghostlike, candy-cotton clouds. It felt good to see them again after such a long time.
Hot air collected sand from the similarly scorching earth, slowly swirling it around like a child waving ribbons excitedly overhead.
Whip — this way. Whip — that way.
Picking up momentum and collecting more grains, the dust devil snake-dancing across the veld rose higher and higher.
Whip — this way. Whip — that way.
Even the dancing dust devil rose poetic as it danced further away from the road. She must have dozed off when the taxi began moving. The long-distance taxi rattled along the dusty dirt road, heaving and creaking as it carried its occupants. The taxi’s joints rattled, tires speeding along the long road, fire at its feet, racing away from the devil. Except it was going in the wrong direction. She sat up slowly, tired beyond measure. Like one who had been pushing away a giant thumb intent on crushing her. She was spent, catching her breath after the thumb had disappeared with no idea if it would come back. Restless and weary, she was catching this breath but felt as if she was becoming even more exhausted as each second passed. It was too quiet in the taxi and her own thoughts were too loud.
Leaning into the warm glass, she thought of the letter that had arrived at her door two weeks before on a sunny day after a week of rain. The sky was boasting blue on that day, too. The crisp, white envelope in her window was anything but expected and served to unravel the careful excavation she had been doing. Seeming a joke at first, she realized it somehow arrived almost two years too late, yet exactly when she needed it most. Jay had sent her an email a few weeks after he had left, saying to expect something in the mail soon, but he had no idea when. Sending each other letters, poems, scribbles from whatever tiny corner of the world they found themselves in had become a tradition of theirs.
It was always a joy finding on her doorstep a postcard or tiny scribbled note of greeting in an envelope from some far-off place he had traveled to on her doorstep.
R,
if you had told me
If you had told me, as we stood by the window and time crystalized to nothingness, that all would be what it is now, I would have been astounded. The sky shook and turned a sickly orange as we stood watching. Even the misunderstood parts of us looked on in awe – for once a similar thread held us together, and we drew breath in the same way. I am grateful for all the poetry I have lived out with you beside me.
To say I love and loved you once is an understatement. I ask myself what it is I know of love when too often I am unable to find the words necessary to describe it. You held my hand once – that felt nice. You felt nice. Time was on our side. Yet now it fades beyond our grips even as our fingertips circle each other’s palms filled with hope. Do not let go, you say. Do not let go either, I say. But nothing is holding us together except those very words. Weak threads.
We lie together against the bitter cold of the wintertime night and howling wind outside. I thought the stars were aligned for us, you say. Yes, they were. But we lost sight and moved to free will. The stars figured we knew what we were doing and left us to our fate.
— J
Nothing else except those words.
In the days before he left, they had filled each day with all the things they enjoyed doing together. She had insisted they find and make time. It felt nice. Talking about the fears they had held onto, walls they had built separating themselves from the world, and all the ways they had not been able to make their ways to themselves. It felt like an unburdening. Embracing in the bus terminal, she had thrust her own envelope into Jay’s hand.
Even though she had told herself she was penning those words for him, in truth she had written them for herself, too. For the parts they had allowed themselves to share and for all the time they had poured into all the love they could.
J,
all about love
There are things – moments that look like love.
Like the hold of a hand or some
other memory of tenderness you assumed you did not deserve
as you closed yourself away from it all.
It also looks like the day you decided you were worthy and let yourself hold every feeling.
You held the door open and let it rush upon you.
There is a multitude of places that mean love, and each one is a kindness you deserve.
— R
Reo smiled watching him walk away.
It felt warm inside her heart.
He disappeared behind the glass doors into the gleaming blue of the day, into the red bus and set on his journey towards home. For all the fears she might have had about starting over, she could not deny the magic of his letter arriving two years later, just as she was packing away her life to set out on the road as he had all that time ago.
Or that of the sunny spoekasem-filled skies.
Or the dancing dust devil and the way it held her time like the stolen glances and leaning-in dances they had been too afraid to dance before those few summer days.
Reo closed her eyes, leaning deeper into the warmth of the glass window. The taxi rattled on along the road no longer with a devil fire at its wheels but with the fearless dance of the dust devil ready to rewrite her fears.
Photograph by Hector Ramon Perez on Unsplash.
The Author
Boipelo Seswane is a Seoul-based South African artist. She is a teacher, performer/creator (actor, model, painter), and writer with experience in multiple facets of creativity, including writing, editing, theater, and film. She has always been interested in interrogating life through words and other forms of expression.
Instagram: @bopzybee