transitory

Hi I'm Irdina Suleiman. I was born on a Thursday afternoon, at about 4:44PM, 18 February 1999. I suppose this is how all our stories began. I used to wonder why so many babies were born light skinned but as I grew up I've realised that at the time we were all canvases waiting to be marked by the different people you meet through your life. I should've known. After all, the canvases I've seen in the museums I've been too are filled with history and an outpouring of emotion that I wouldn't know where to begin with. So I  started my own canvases and I tried to find the right colours, a palette to my liking before I finally realised what I was doing to myself. I destroyed any possibility of being a showpiece when my knife became my paintbrush. I don't know why I decided to do this. Maybe because there's 31 days left to O Levels and I can't decipher this aching sense of loss. I've been feeling heavy lately a lot. It's the same kind of heavy you feel when your father takes you swimming and decides to tuck into your swimsuit a stone, one for every year of your age so that by the time you're 16, the only thing you know better than the burn of oxygen in your lungs as a fire you didn't know you started rages on, is the flickering of a dim heartbeat. I should've known. I should've seen this coming right from the moment I was born that I wasn't meant to live. How could I, when 4 means death and 4 means I shouldn't exist. Remind me why I'm siting alone trying not to convulse into tears even when something inside of me has been ripped to shreds. And remind me how to fix me.