Portraits: Death

One of the first things that I remember about that night, now as I look back on it, is the almost purified stillness that marked the night even as a thousand vehicles lined up behind each other in a typical highway gridlock. There wasn't the usual sound of horns that usually accompanies this scenario (of course, retrospective memory might have purposefully wiped that bit clean). The view from inside the bus was detached and comfortable, making a mockery of the neighbouring truck driver's plight, as he continually squirmed and shifted in his small seat. Inside, the air-conditioner put the majority of the passengers to sleep, although there were a few obligatory grumbles about the dire state of our roads and about the country in general. 
It was strange to see everything around me daubed in a yellow tinge at three in the night, as I got down from the bus for a cigarette. Someone with a better penchant for words than me would have been more apt at describing the almost marshy grass that paved the road on both sides and the blue paint that was reluctantly peeling off of the truck's front bumper. And in that pale yellow glow, the cigarette smoke drifted skywards aimlessly, unsure of what to do or where to be. In front of the bus was a rather small, white station wagon. It caught my attention for more reasons than one. The rear windshield was painted with dust in a pattern that you could be mistaken into thinking it was intentional. In the middle someone had scribbled the letters '2h 31' with yellow chalk and drawn a half broken circle around it. It was gibberish to me, of course, but it could very well have been a child speaking in his own made up language. The damp, yellow light that flooded the entirety of the highway filtered into the station wagon and cast shadows onto the dusty rear windshield. All around the scribbled '2h 31' I got glimpses of a family of four sitting happily at the back. To the right was the mother, wearing a long-sleeved dress that ended just above her wrists as she stretched one arm across the expanse of the seat towards her husband, who had his head arched out of the open window. Between them there were two cots, whose shadows would occasionally stir sleepily or raise a tiny finger. In the stilled silence of the gridlock, the ash on the tip of my cigarette solidified; I watched, transfixed, as the mother dangled a forefinger over one of the cots and a shy hand tremulously reached out for it. The two united at the base of the '2' for a split second before the child's hand fell back, into the sort of dreamless sleep that poets try and fail to emulate with their words.
2h 31. What could it mean? I remember writing the letters down in my notebook as an imprint, a tangible proof that I was there, in close proximity to the kind of love that we are only privy to in intermittent spurts, the kind that reclines in abandoned armchairs on empty balconies and in handprints that slowly fade with the seasons, yet never fully go away. Notebook still in hand, I fell asleep in my seat, not privileged to the dreamless silence of the shadows on that rear windshield.
I woke up the next morning to find the bus in yet another gridlock although we had moved from our position last night. As I got down for my morning cigarette, I heard hushed whispers of something else amongst the audible grumbles of traffic and being late for work. There had been a terrible accident, apparently. The first image I got as my eyes slowly adjusted to the morning sun was a giant blue crane lifting up a bloody rear windshield. The dust had somehow dissipated overnight and the yellow chalk of the '2h 31' was now smeared with blood. Whose I didn't know, neither did I know how it happened. Just that it did. I wondered, for an instant, as my cigarette trembled and the embers fell limply to the ground, was the mother's finger still floating above the base of the '2' as it happened? Was the husband still looking out into the night, contemplating the music of breaths that emanated from the cots? I quickly walked away and back into the bus, away from the scene that would go on to be the source of countless sleepless nights and confused tears. Walked away from the '2h 31' without a backward glance, away from the huddle of people determined to clear the mess as soon as possible. Would anyone of them wonder what those letters meant? 

To DK, for giving me the courage to finally write about it. 

Children of the Sun

DK

They told me I was fine
Blamed the nuts and bolts in my head 
For working too hard.
But I knew in my heart
That we are the children of the sun.
I know you, and you are real
I see the hole in your chest
Reach into mine and feel it beat.
It beats with you
It beats on the nights
You mistook the knife for bandages
And you thought the noose
Will make you fly once more
And I know you believe 
That the pain runs in your veins
 But one day it will be gone
And you will fly with
The wings you made
With blood as feathers.
But till then remember that
You are real
And being not fine
Is fine.