Sacrifice

The steel below me was as cold and lifeless as it could be. It seemed as though I was retaining an eerie sense of actualization. The taste of metal was increasingly frankly expressed. My sight was not initiated from a certain angle; the light was not reflected onto my eyes anymore. The light was not of much significance now. The dimension into which I was being introduced trespassed the blue laws of facts and physics. All was relative. All was none.
I was more vividly aware of my surroundings. But I was extent beyond spacial constraints. It seemed as though I existed somewhere between the body and the white tardy sheet. My nails needed a cut. My hair was glued with greasy secretions to my scalp, except for a few repugnant charcoal black hairs from the left side of the head. My eyes were bulging out. No more compliments were to be offered to the them anymore. The nose was already big. However, a bluish red bruise was dominant over the right nasal bone. My lips were chipped and puffed to the outside. Not much air was there to cushion the size. The biggest slit was at the center almost perfectly symmetrically separating the two halves of the lower lip. The beard was a mess. The rib cage was.. opened?
The heart was still beating on the silver tray on the counter to the medium far right. I gasped! Or maybe it was the moment blowing the wind through the labored melancholic milestone. To the far right, way way to the right, there was a whistle. For a first impression, it can be easily mistaken for a Chinese lullaby playing in collaboration with the "coronary base". That which pulls back cries of the child, memories of the gone. The humming was as soothing, too. It was a she. Dressed in childish white along with occasionally crimson stains. A dress so simple with its straps covering to just above her knees. The hair was fully blond. Slightly curled at the tips. Naturally blond. The gal was in contact with the floor. The sole and the five perky toes where all connected to the stance and the white blocks of the ground. Even the dusts were charmed to her feet while she insisted on dancing over their presence. The face could not be identified anymore. The arms? Maybe. The golden wisps? The neck? The slightly showing jawline? The innocent light movements? Yes!
She was a state of existence. That smile! That nose. But what's happening? I swear I could hear her laugh. Her childish frolic was evident with the utensils beating against each other. Intentionally slammed into each other by those hands. Her hands!
But why?
My death was but a phase to her thoughts. The heart was a sacrifice to the upper good, to the bigger group. That moment, love was stripped to its instinctual lust. The pretty little pink was not so pink, not so little, not so pretty.

Average: An Ode to My Dad

He didn't even say anything. He just pushed the bathroom door half closed and flushed the yellow flabby skin of his face with palm-sized doses of fresh water from under the faucet. We were too fast to pay attention. The fries were almost done and the hamburger meat was slumping against the side of my plate. Too much were the mundane chitchats rushing through the last chunk of the night. Meanwhile, Dad's hands kept on applying the cold to his rough jaw up to his wrinkled hilly forehead. Then, he went out. Not a word and walked down the corridor through the spaces we managed to separate ourselves with. He reeled to the living room and to the balcony ahead were he settled on the yellow plastic seat. Dad was in search for the load of air he felt his chest seemed to have lost. His mouth was overflowing with the ants nibbling on his lips and the space a bit afar. It wasn't until he yelled for some alcohol to whiff that we fell back to his circle. We rushed to the emergency room tonight, and all was fine.
It all happened too fast. Now as I am pressing against the tabs of the keyboard, I recap the thoughts that have flooded my mindset ever since we returned home from the overwhelming smell of disease and trivially formal medical bureaucracy.The first thing that whipped my thoughts was the constant times we blamed Dad for us being plain average. Just average.
It is quite true. Every time we read about a five-year old prodigy taming the black and white slaves of his piano, an acrobat that has been practicing since she was 3 or a genius that mastered 5 different languages by the age of 12, I blamed Dad. He never enrolled his kids in any space where they can unleash the powers within. I think I would have been easily capable of juggling several languages, paint and generate music from the heart of the most obedient instruments. Really, I would've. And more. So, I kept blaming him. And every time I did, it felt right. It was his choice for us.
I was never as sure to have stood up to what was obvious to me; I could have been better. Elite! The idea was so pervasive in my conscious until a few hours ago where it all became clear. Maybe it was my adrenaline outburst forcing me to think. Maybe.
Growing up, my Dad was the youngest of 7. His mother was as ignorant as his father was financially constrained; his work shifted often between a doorman at certain points and a shoemaker at others. He discovered that his mother was not capable of reading when she held the book upside down while pretending to test his recitation at an early age. By mistake. He never cared, or so he managed to pretend, that his teacher hit him because he was "unrealistically descriptive" of his residence; his teacher pulled his dreams back to class: " Do not lie! Your house is a grave."
His dad was not home by each night. Or day. Or days. He lost his mom by the age of 14 and went from Mashghara to Zahle' in West Bekaa of Lebanon to continue pursue his studies. He then moved to Beirut where life was no less easier. He worked endlessly to pull himself from his past. All he wanted to be was like everyone else. All he wanted to be was average. He wanted the house he once falsely described, the bike he never had and the family he always dreamed of endorsing.
On every occasion, he flips the page back to the sugar sandwich his mom treated him with and the bike she promised to get him. And he cries.
Just as it passed across my mind, the idea of me losing him was painfully liberating. These words can not be any more sincere. So, thank you Dad. Thank you for being average and sharing your success with me. Average is where I will always want to be.