Felix bobbed back and forth, almost held aloft by the throng of children that wanted whatever it was he had…arms outstretched to the sky, pawing at his every move…the look on his face said everything and it didn’t take long…for the test to be over. Felix struggled back towards me and said...”here!...you take it back”...”I don’t want to have to decide which is the right answer”…and with that I sighed in relief and reached out to him and took the multi coloured starburst memories back…took them all back and prepared again to line the children up for a fair run, for a bit of a game amongst the hardship they endure each and every day, at each and every meal time for the lack of basic food
There was nothing fair about any of this…I looked to the sky…letting them see my intentions and let them go, hurling the purple people eater…the orange mango…the yellow banana rama….the strawberry koolaid…the pink flamingos, all of them a dream for a child in itself and I took aim, and with a pause before the rush, a pause before the outcry…I let them fly…one after the other they left my fingers like a baseball heading for the catchers glove in another world series bout with me as pitcher…
And with that they all ran away screaming and running pushing and shoving down the beach to chase down a dream of brightly coloured candies all lost in a sea of bare feet scurrying to find the prize buried in the beach sand. However they didn’t all go running towards the waters edge. One child…one small young child stood in front of me speaking wildly…her face contorted, her hands motioning for me to give her sibling, held high in her arms…a starbust dream….just one please!
I smiled a congenial smile – shaking my head “that the cupboard was bare, that there wasn’t any left…there was no room at the inn”…for the likes of her and her younger sister. The smiles on my own face gave way to the gravity of it all. Her frown, telling me in a perfect language that she was hungry...making me bow my head that I didnt have enough, not one left to give this little waif of a girl and so for her and her little sister I had nothing to give...nothing
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