Silent Cries

I overheard her say,”oba I love him, oba not?” She looked sad and happy at the same time. She was with her girlfriends. She had one of the most beautiful lips a woman her age could ever have but behind the beauty of the lips lay a smile that concealed a whole world of pain behind its beautiful façade. I couldn’t imagine how much this girl had lived through so far. Her soul was the pale skyline that she stretched across the horizon. I was taken aback by her happy-sad look. “sometimes” she said and smiled while adding ”oba I be there and I ask myself if I made the right choices or not” One of the other girls with her said, ”me, as long as the dude does me well under the sheets and gives me mula, ebyo of right or wrong tebimataringa” I remember back in 1999 when we went on a geography trip as a student and we stumbled on a mischievous tourist on one of those nature walks in Kibale national park. The breeze was slow and crispy underneath the lush green canopy of lianas creeping among the branches of the centennial trees that cast their withered silhouettes on our moving bodies. The dying leaves on the forest floor crackled underneath our feet. Christie. Christie was her name. She said, “ Dan, have you ever looked at yourself in the eyes of an angel?” With her opulently gorgeous smile, she shuffled her feet and said, “am an angel, if you can run after me and catch me you will see yourself in my eyes” then she sped off along the narrow forest path. So half of me rode to the mountains and the other half soared high in the winds to a place where the angels had fallen, the soil gagged and choked on their wings. The look on these two girls’ faces both drew pictures on my heart-Suave, delicate strokes from their little painter’s brushers on the canvas of my heart . Oh Christie, when we had to board our school truck and return to St Leo’s college, my life was left hollow and ashes filled the gorge of my within. The enchanting perfume of the forest floor and the bleak, cold breath of hers still haunts me...That left me wondering for years later, Will this pain ever pass?