I stand on the grounds of a once beautiful home,
under skies with the muted light
of a windy, cloudy, dust-filled sky
chasing an early dusk.
This home feels abandoned, neglected and ignored,
dry dust where once luscious lawns grew.
And I hear a cry, a lonely whimper,
from a dog confined somewhere.
I walk the cracked paving where weeds have drawn
a chaotic pattern through the crevices,
to enter a door, the metal frame coloured with rust,
into a room with the curtains drawn.
Stale and musty is the air, thick and filled with dust,
the colours a pale, indistinguishable shade of brown,
their life long lost in time.
I hastily leave and now drive down darkened streets,
and as naturally as travelling on tarred roads
she rises into the air.
We float over treetops and suburbia,
miniature houses with pinpricks of light
hidden amongst tall trees,
before dropping into a neighbourhood
familiar, only by name.
The streets are deserted, the houses now dark,
an occasional pool of light from a streetlamp
guiding the way.
Deep here, is the silence, and the air of desertion,
as I walk these unknown roads.
And just as I round the corner
my heart sinks when I see my car,
standing askew on the side of the road,
the axle horribly bent.
How did this happen. What will I do.
What will I say. How am I going to fix this.
With shaking hands and shakier knees
I sink into an old, unsteady metal chair
in the backyard of somebody's house.
A nameless old lady with an apron and a headscarf
joins us at the table and while I am trying
to make sense of what happened,
she presents me with photographs,
photographs of flowers. Pictures, she says,
I should show my mother,
for she will surely recognise them as those
she grew in Windhoek.
All this time my stomach is twisted into knots,
knots of fear, apprehension, dread, indecision,
yet I knew I had to take responsibility
for this, which has happened,
though it's the last thing I wanted to do.
How could I possibly right this with my parents?
So intense were the feelings, my muscles so stiff,
they stirred my sleeping body into wakefulness,
and relief flooded through me,
as I slowly, was released, from this dream...
