The first thing you know is that you don't know how to run until you know how to run.

***

"Do you plead guilty?" The Judge asks, his glasses perches on the bottom of his nose.

"Do you -"

Although the ceiling fan whizzes faithfully, the room is still hot. It is still still hot.

You are held behind a dock not just by chains washing your hands and feet but by betrayal spoken in silence. Your hands, those large elements of bloody lust, gasp for the air of freedom, at least.

Anxiety is carefully sketched on the brown faces of the court.

The eyes in the room shining brighter than your future peep into your past.

***

Your anger started the day you met Mama sitting on the verandah; her wrapper had come undone, finger prints, five of them, kissed her cheeks, disheveled hair, and eyes blood red from crying. And Papa walked around like four walls with the paintings of Mama's curse words hanging on them.

"Prostitute!"

"Jobless drunk!"

Whenever they quarrelled, there was a cold war; minutes grew into hours, hours into days, days into weeks...

You know the air in your compound smells of their daily quarrells, yet you do nothing, can do nothing but run away. Away from it. It's now normal that if you see Papa saying I love you to Mama, you wonder if something is wrong, if it's a dream.

You keep on dreaming but the pain from the cuffs whisper reality into your eyes.

***

"Do you plead guilty?"

The atmosphere is now condensed like the hot thick pap Mama does for you and Ike every Saturday morning.

In nanoseconds, you could be kissing Mother Earth goodbye just from one statement of one man. One! One!

You look around, wanting to say the truth. Say it anyway!

But then you keep quiet.

***

That fateful day you were greeted by distant sounds of fighting. You know it's Mama and Papa again!

"Not again," you mumble and walk into the sitting room sluggishly.

Your sight beheld a liquid on the burgundy carpet. No, it was not water, it was blood, that sacred stream of life's mystery, Mama's blood!

"Daddy, stop, please, stop," your younger brother, Ike, screams, kept on screaming. He tugs at you to do something because the overflowing blood scares him. But you do nothing, can do nothing but run away. Away from it.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

The punches come in quick successions. Mama's body lay half-dead, half-consYou'vehalf-consYou'vehalf-consYou'vehalf-consYou've

The punches come in quick successions. Mama's body lay half-dead, half-consYou'vehalf-consYou've on the floor decorated with blood.

on the floor decorated with blood. on the floor decorated with blood.

"Daddy-"

The blood melts into thin air, into your eyes, forming a dark cloud, maybe an envelope on the canopy of your eyelids.

You can no longer take it.

So, you grab Papa by the neckcollar of his shirt but he pushes you away. Once, twice, thrice.

Your anger gets the better part of you when you forget the scissors in your hand in his neck.

Blood gushing out, Papa dies within minutes. The same minutes with which everything falls apart.

Papa is dead. Dead!

***

You know you should run. But you also know that you don't know how to run until you know how to run. Instead your feet glues to the roof of the earth and your tongue embraces silence.

Your mother's eyes, though dull with darkness, will you to run away. Still, you don't run, you don't want to run. You don't want to run but still run. Still, run!

Don't run again. The police are waiting out of your house.

"Who called them?" you kept asking.

***

Now.

You pose, one knee up, one knee down, before a congregation of rifles about to blow your dream off. An eye closed, you remember minutes of memories that you never can forget. Memories such as your younger brother calling the police against you, in fear. Memories such as the night you mixed rat poison in Mama's drinking water instead of Papa's.

You tiptoe through life into the bars of death. You are now your own fate. Can you run away from it?

#TheRun