The Blinding Hopes and Desires

The tense shoulder sitting next to the charming lover who wants to spend every waking (or not) moment with her. The knotted nape is probably lost thinking about the mother at home, alone, watching a phone or speaking on one.

The separation has already started, it seems.

But the tension in her shoulders doesn’t relax once she is back home either. She was too late last night, skipped dinner the night before, and there would be surely something unsettling in the days to follow.

Pleasure for the daughter is only allowed when sanctioned by the law of the family, religion and the state. All other pleasures outside the approval of these will have to either be killed or brought into the fold of acceptance, although, only when it’s not transgressive.

Who is the daughter then struggling against, trying to separate from? The multiple laws that are following her or the mother who lights up when she walks into a room. They are not the same, are they? One’s a body, a smell, a memory, a familiar set of teeth and a nose. The other’s an idea, omnipresent, present within the daughter.

The mother, a projection of these internal rules, is not as naive as she seems when she has a running nose. This mother, a projection of these internal rules insidiously left these laws within.

The daughter first fascinated and privileged that she is the chosen one to take ahead these laws passed on for centuries, walks in the shadows of the mother, mimicking her, not moving a limb outside the silhouette. Not knowing when the shadow is all that she can see, leaps towards the blinding light that is all around her. The shadow was dark and comforting but there is spring in the sun and so much new life offering different kinds of shade.

All she can do is wonder once in a while if light and shadow are both blinding.

PS: This is an anonymous entry by a writer who goes by the pen name Ningi.

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