When dusk falls, lights go out like a thousand fireflies caught unawares by a net of woven torment.
Houses seal their entrances, and the thickening air smothers any leftover unwanted presences.
Soon, breaths go steady, and dreams are left unmonitored.
When dusk falls, trees shake and their leaves tremble; the unforgiving sea scatters froth that looks
crimson in the dimness. The night tastes fowl in the mouth of a stranger; home to creatures living
and non-living alike.
When dusk falls, she arrives. She sits in the same place as the night before, the night before that,
and the night before that. The wind drapes around her like a cloak of turbulence that harmonises
with her soul.
She breaths in the delicious restlessness that blankets the beach: while the rest of the world sleeps,
the ocean has just awoken. She doesn’t feel invisible here; she feels understood— as if her presence
is acknowledged, and the water sings her name in shades of midnight blue.
Unfortunately, the lack of solitude here does little to erase her lingering grief. A few fragments of
sharp glass in the soft sand remind her of the tiny fractures of her heart. She runs her fingers over
them contentedly, relishing the pain.
The sweet night air whirls around her in a hurricane of leaves and shredded despair. It is a final
warning from the universe to rethink what she came here to do, but her decision is made, and she
cannot back away now. She had lain on the floor all day thinking about this under the comforting
shelter of a stray tree and had sat up determined.
The girl finally stands and looks toward her only family for the last time. The wind whispers goodbye
into her ears, and she responds in kind. Then she starts walking, for the shadows call to her
impatiently. With every step she takes, she sheds away the emotions that haunted her for years,
thoughts that once made her sob uncontrollably in her sleep. She leaves all the hatred behind, all
the loneliness, fury, abandonment, and grief. The crashing waves welcome her home as she glides
beneath the folds of the ocean and sinks into its loving coolness.
She lets her spirit flow away once and for all, escaping the chilly wetness in vibrant beams of light.
Her energy makes its way up and warms into the beautiful abode of the speckled night sky, bursting
into brilliant shards of untainted mist that rain upon houses of unworthy people. Finally, her body
stills upon the sandy sheets of the seabed.
It is not only this girl whom we grieve for tonight, but also the countless others that die every day because of our discrimination, violence and neglection. We torture and mar our own people with scars that go deeper than the skin. Our endless corruption and lack of human spirit are driving us into disarray, and we are doing nothing.
It is not a spirit that glides from hell to shower us with cruelty and malice; not the villains in fairy tales that are the monsters. It is not a phantom that rises from the ashes of death to maim and kill, but us. We are the ones who haunt this world. We are the true demons.