UNTITLED

by Tyra Frazier design by Nissi Yorke

As a child i never felt the need to explain myself or the intricacies that formulate my essence. Though as my age progressed, it resulted in the inevitable molding and hardening of my heart, forcing me to realize that it was the carelessness of my adolescence that i took most for granted. Most of the time i am able to distract myself from this fact by remaining in a constant state of mental occupation and as long as my mind never has time to wander i am fine. But, when that one dreadful moment occurs where i have free time to myself, i find myself unable to avoid this fact and am struck by the sheer intensity of it. This realization most often occurs in the minutes right after i turn my lights off to go to sleep and in the reflection of my window i can see myself clearly. It should be a beautiful moment, the city lights streaming into my room in a perfect stream of illumination, but instead is it dreadful. In the window, my face seems to contort. My deep set eyes and broad nose seems to droop and my night gown, several sizes too big for me seems to swallow me. It is in this moment of solitude that i realize how utterly and undeniably alone, a fact i am unable to avoid. For me, loneliness is not an emotion, but a person.

A woman who i don’t think of as often as i used to, but when i do, i am still consumed with the same amount of indescribable loathing that causes me to get up and begin walking no matter where I am, like a machine being prompted by a remote. It is as if this memory, this idea, is so revolting that a sort of primitive instinct takes a hold of me that forces me to run away from it. When i picture Gran Gran, the first thing I see is her hands; her fingers so wrinkled that they become almost indistinguishable. It is these hands that i loved the most. Much of my adolescence was shaped by those hands. How they periodically moved to her face to adjust her reading glasses as she sat, her face scrunched up

as if the glasses would only work if her face was stuck into a permanent scowl. i remember how she would sew for hours on end, her back hunched, the hard line of her spine showing through her night gown. It is this very position that years later, led to her back problems, ones that even as she walked crooked, would deny she had. It was those same hands that used to run their fingers through my thick head of curls, intricately braiding along the entirety of my hairline, the distinct feeling of the comb along my scalp as she parted it. As a child, i idolized those hands. i would sit for hours in her lap, the news playing from the television, gently tracing the lines of her wrinkles along her dark-brown hands, hoping that they’d tell me something. i would move my fingers along the train track pattern of her wrinkles, like a seer waving their hand over a glass ball. i believed that just by feeling them i would be able to feel all the stories and experiences stored in them and maybe they would explain why i felt the way i did. That why at the age of eight i already had this shadow of sadness following me everywhere i went. i was convinced that maybe her hands would tell me how to get rid of it and where it came from. But, i quickly realize that this was foolish. How could i learn this from a woman who was never able to get rid of it herself? It was during these formative years that the idea of a familial curse began taking root in my head. It was the only explanation that made sense then and the only one that makes sense now.