Dum spiro, spero

Picture: Umhlanga Beach, Durban, South Africa.

The world stands up, a thunder in the hall, a standing ovation for the part I’ve played. They roar in laughter, answering the call of every joke and every point I’ve made. But I am standing where the shadows lie; behind the heavy black velvet where I watch the golden moments pass by and feel the silence pressing on my back.

The curtain shuts. My job, they say, is done. They talk of all the light I’ve managed to cast, of battles fought and tiny victories won; of how I made the joy and comfort last. But here behind the scenes, I’m small and still. I am a lighthouse standing in a churning sea; I guide the ships with iron-stiffened will, while fearing the very dark that swallows me. ​I am the optimistic, hopeless romantic, telling the lonely that their time will come. I stand still while beating a rhythm on a hollow drum. I smile weakly at those who pass by me: the lovers holding hands-the hearts in bloom. I tell them they look beautiful, and I walk back to the silence of my room.

I close my eyes and see their “ever after,”: the hugs I give, the warmth I’ve helped find. I fill their empty houses with my laughter, while leaving my own desires behind. They say that I am ‘grand’. They toast to my name, they see a mountain where I feel a grain of sand. They lay their broken pieces at my feet, the wreckage of a plan that’s gone astray. “You can fix this,” they say, with sweet smiles. “You always find the words; you’ll find a way.” They believe in me—the world, the crowd, the sun—except the frantic brain inside my head. It whispers that the race is already run, and all my strength is just a fragile thread.

I mend the seams where others’ hopes have torn, I fan fires that are dying. But who is there to comfort the outworn, and tend the hollow space I keep inside? I am a lifeline thrown by shaking hands, a steady beat for hearts that lose their way. I build a bridge across the shifting sands, and yet the ground I stand on begins to fray.

Wearing a crown you can’t understand is a strange and lonely shame. ​The hole is deep, and often I am drawn to slip away, to hide, to just be still. The optimistic mask I wore is now heavy—a climb against the will. ​But even in the dark, the words still run. Its a frantic pulse to prove that I am here. A chatterbox whose work is never done, who laughs the loudest to quiet down the fear.

The Chatterbox of the Dark: Written by Sasunnach, Edited by Chuma Chinzila.