Myrha's Blog

  SPIRIT     I'm studying a handout and getting groggy this fine Sunday afternoon in my department's building ; a short time after one of my yawns  this person walks past, makes a U-turn and comes back, a tight smile on his face.  Geek alert!!! The glasses, the smile, the intensity of his gaze. I like...   He joins me on the bench, his arm trembles a little as he cleans the seat; this is the last thing I need now, right now I don't want any social fumbling around me, I'm already exhausted from the heat wave, "Bikonu ,what is  that smell?" I ask myself, it's  pleasant, too pleasant for a geek. In my experience, geeks smell like they've been indoors for too long, a stuffy aftermath imbues their bodies and personalities; sometimes they smell like unwashed, sweaty clothes, but this one, he smells...   We talk, we have similar interests, we exchange numbers, we talk some more. We talk God, feminism, Forex, sexual abuse and he ...

  LESSER THAN II    "Four is lesser than three, is this true or false?" "False!" Four is a number, three another number but four is greater than three, this is the law, this is the reason why we can buy and sell - inequality. "That is correct," I hear her low voice approve.   I die another death but I know I'll live this time because it has happened many times before and I know when the beating is too hard for my body to take, I do not even try to run - it only fuels the hits.  This time I have nobody to defend myself for, this time I am not pregnant. When the tide ebbs, we would make up again, again. Let it go.   I should protect my face first, now that I hear the click of metal, his belt's buckle. Ah! I like the sound it makes in the air. Sometimes, the pain is pleasurable, those times when he is not drunk; when he actually takes his time to hurt me numb, yes!!! It is only when I am numb that the pleasure starts to trickle in slow...

LESSER THAN I     "Me, I am a feminist and I write about women experiences and the ideologies of gender-utopia.   Is gender blindness an aim of the feminist movement, is it a worthy aim? This is a discussion for another day.   What happens when women start being  paid the same for the same jobs, when marriage and the seeming protection and ownership thereof are no longer  things women alone should aspire for  when marriage finally becomes a partnership and not a bond of ownership: where the man is seen as the driver and the woman, the car; when rape is not justified because a girl is dressed in a particular way or behaves in a particular way, when men are finally seen as not uncivilised animals and are no longer excused by being represented that way but are seen as people who can control their sexual appetites as any woman can, what happens after men have been allowed to cry more, what happens then? Would feminism still be needed?"  ...

  FACES  "You just slapped me?!" Did I slap her? I did not even feel my palm meet her skin, I only remember a red haze swallow me and ominous silence.   ''Oh God!! shameless, that is what you are, all of you!'' What is she talking about?   ''You were inside your office with a foolish woman and I am trying to protect us and you slap me!! So this is it? You have been looking for an opportunity to send me away from this house? No? You paid bride price complete oh! Ka'm gwa kwa gi, let me just tell you, unless my father will give it back to you I will not leave!!'' Papa is dead.   ''I will not leave this house for any woman!!!'' She shrieks and  turns away from me, to inspect her face. Her usual flawless skin is red below one cheek; as she slowly turns her head to the mirror in front of her, she begins to whimper.   "I'm..." I begin, her phone cuts me short with a love song; it mocks us. '...

ANGST     I want to break something, to hit something fragile on a hard wall and listen intently to it splintering. Destroy totally, take action - purposeful or not.   To do something finally, something that is concrete but not complicating things like weakness, just the drunken and happy feeling of doing wrong to intimidate.   I broke mother's favorite glass cup, a mixed sense of achievement moves from my lower belly to my chest and now against my will, my torso bends to gather the pink jagged pieces. Quickly.