Facing Heat

I smoke. It is a habit I picked up while going to university and well... Sometimes at lunch, overwhelmed by the busyness of my office I go to a little bar on the corner. It's against the law to smoke in public, but this bar has outdoor seating. From the front of "Earth" I light a cigarette over the pretense of lunch in front of me and look around at the people walking; driving; drifting by. Sometimes as they pass a story would whisper to me about where they came from or where they might be going now, so quickly by and deliberately avoiding eye contact.

Usually I sit alone feeling at the same time vulnerable yet cut off from their world. I wonder what I look like to them, to everyone else. I think of my lovers present and past and inhale with the sounds escaping into my head around my blasting headphones the scent of their memories. There is a heat under my skin that rises slowly to the surface then pushes further forcing through the pores in my clothes.Heat has a habit of expanding, expanding into the red and orange paint of the building behind me. It turns the red tiles on the ground into coals burning through my sandals to the soles of my feet and up into me mingling with mine.

Most times I feel I am waiting for something. Maybe a thought that carries me through with it completely, perhaps a poem as secret and burning as I feel in my finger tips. Whatever I'm waiting on perhaps it'll move me along with the world passing me by. Perhaps into one of the stories for me to live along with it and reawaken every time a part of it is told or remembered.

Imagine if you can, the freedom of seeing the world through the largest, most flexible sheet of glass. Imagine the last drops of water on your heating beer. Imagine the whiff of smoke rising from the cigarette, dangling, lengthening ashes on end, suspended between your already burning finger tips...imagine that feeling.

Doesn't it feel like waiting?

Memory re- covered

I am a writer. I write short stories and poetry. I will share some of my work on here; in my kumbla and watch myself as I grow.

One of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me was, simple as it is, to buy me a copy book. I found it last night after a year and this is what was written in it....

4am in the little house on the corner in Toco village, Christine looked up into the roof, the ceiling having rotted off years before she was born perhaps. The sheets next to her still smelt sweetly used, warm, like her lover. This last night on the hill had been the greatest and though the sun would come up, the bathroom break would be over and she would smile into the yes of her lover it was not that time yet, and now she wanted to feel the warmth on her pillow savor the smell lingering on the tips of her fingers smile to herself and welcome the morning.

This weekend was the perfect get away. She needed some quiet and had the opportunity to settle int this. Christine was hesitant at first not wanting to leave the comfort of her own bed and her laptop. She had become completely introverted lately preferring to sit in her own room mellowing through her thoughts. On a whim she had left home, technology and ventured into this place.

Walking through the broken overgrown fence and up the walk she noticed the mosaic of cobblestones half buried in dirt moved and resettled countless times. The flowers in the yard could have at one time been very pretty, she could see that with just a little imagination. Inside the floor was patchy, cast concrete and painted red when the garden was kept. It was paradise.

Celeste walked back into the room shaking her locks wet at the end. She had snuck a quick shower. Even in the dim light coming through the slit of the louvers Catherine could see her glowing. If there were doubts before they were completely gone now. Celeste fell back onto the bed, Catherine's legs wrapping around her middle.

"Goodnight baby."

"Good morning love."

"Go eena Kumbla"

I don't know where this is going as it is my first. I have only a vague idea of what this blog is to be about and how I am to accomplish that. I don't know what you will get out of this if anything at all. It is my place to be completely selfish and deal with only what is on my mind. Trace my own growth as I progress...my Kumbla. I will not share my kumbla it is my secret. My protective shell, my comfort, my cocoon. Thank you Erna Brodber (Jamaican writer and my teacher of short story writing @ Mona Campus Jamaica) for this reference it is one I can snuggle into and feel at home.

Sometimes a kumbla can protect you from the worst of things and I wish mine would act just the way I want it to. Offer me a place to escape to and be myself. A place to feel freely. A place to hold on to my spirit wrapping till the essence flows out of it. A place that warms my spirit's sight like the first kisses of the sun. A place of love.

There is a love that seems to consume while lightening. It's an initial feeling that comes across you quite unexpectedly, and takes your spirit clear out of your body and rising in front of your face. There is only so far your eyes can follow it, though somehow you still see everything. You see every step in the travelling. It's a love that takes you so far inside of yourself that you see you for the first time, really see YOU. It's a love the fates laugh at its loss as they watch your spirit settle back down, shift slightly in place and sink into a darkening air. It's the one you get once and never again. "Go eena Kumbla."

The difficult thing about the kumbla is knowing when to emerge. It is difficult to know when u have changed or developed just enough to be ready for what is next. Anything protected too long loses the instinct of defense, it becomes frail and sickly, hugging death with a familiarity all too severe.

"Go eena Kumbla."