TW: domestic violence and abuse
He came roaring into the kitchen, yelling. Each time he opened his mouth to yell yet another word this pool of spit would slap my face. It felt cold but he didn’t care one bit and wouldn’t let me speak. His eyes were tremulous and adapting a burgundy shade, the veins on his neck were showing like a bodybuilder’s and I could feel his warm breath on my forehead -since I was much shorter- as he kept infuriatingly panting. He screamed and hollered until he was completely out of breath and then seeing I wasn’t going to respond, that perhaps I was giving in, he punched me. I remember falling right on the back of my head as his speedily fist felt like it went through my skull. I reached mantle floor.
Where I went then as the floor became my pillow and my husband’s voice too far out of reach, was almost impalpable at first. My whole body had gone numb and the vast horizon that lay in front of me was of nothing but swirling sand and grey dust above it.
After a few seconds I realized my view was clearing up, the grey dust was drifting to one side and the sand to another. Now both of them asunder, a whole expanse of foliating, lush grass was in front of me. It was like an unripe forest yet to grow. It smelled recent and leafy like freshly cut grass and magnolias. And a little bit like a minty lemonade you’d have on a hot summer’s day. It smelled puerile, a new. Not like a scent for one company’s profit but something more unreachable.
There were trees longer than those smoky skyscrapers. Mushrooms that grew up to my ankles embedded all over the place, and clusters of spikes, herbs, flowers... Representing each color of the rainbow. I wanted to smell all of them individually, maybe cut a few so I could grow them on my own when I got back home but my head still felt very heavy and soon enough I became nauseous, my whole body drained off of energy. Fatigued by the hit I had not so long ago received, dragging me down to this celestial place of divine nature and beauty.
I sat down on a rock near a stream of water-its resource out of view-to steady my mind for a while. I feared I might be getting delusional. But how could I ever make up some setting so sublime and real? My stream of consciousness in the middle of so much despair would never take me to this blissful space. My thoughts would probably provoke something much darker and more amiss, it would re-enact my trauma, not bring to a tranquil haven.
As I sat there, waiting for the rush of blood to calm down, I saw silhouettes from the other side of water. Faces of many people, children too. They were like fairies out of a children’s show. Their faces jubilant. One of the women made her way over to my side of the forest. She walked on the cool stream of glimmering water as if it were rock solid.
“I think I have some herbs that may help you with your fever and bruises. Why don’t you come along.”
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