Tiles

I look at the tiles when I walk. Tiles of stone, concrete, and marble. Tiles that are but tessellations on the floor. I try, I make a conscious effort not to step on any edges, nor displace any loose gravel with any twitch of my foot. I step in between the lines, cautious with each movement, always looking down, and never up; maybe a little of left and right, but no, never straight ahead.

Is this how things have come to be?
Have I lost the ability to trust where my feet take me?

Just perhaps, and only just, all these years of colouring within the lines have taken a toll on me. The sun must be yellow. The grass is always green and never brown, dead and dry. The sky is always a baby blue, and never a gloomy grey. A house is always square, and a flower always in full bloom. Rigidity, limiting us to what is standard expectation. Depriving us of true emotion.

There was a time I'd look up at all the little details that made a routine quite vary from day to day. Three pigeons today, seven crows tomorrow. Six girls in a group, the boy next door now next to me. A promisingly grey sky to bring the school soccer field back to life. I'd colour in in pictures details that weren't outlined there in black and white print. I'd add personalities to inanimate objects. Voices that say the words I want to hear. Like in Monet, sometimes if you take away the lines and the rules, you actually get something better. Sometimes the moon is a blur, but its colour is a crisp grey-ish orange. Sometimes the night-sky is a murky purple, and not an ocean of shining distant vessels. Some mornings the Sun isn't even there, some days the afternoon heat distorts the silhouettes of a voyage on the horizon to a wave of black. What we were smacked on the backs of our hands for when we were still put in clothes we could not oppose, we realize only now that it was a reflection of what is real. Maybe adults were trying to keep us from knowing, till the time was right. Till now. Just perhaps, and only just, they were afraid that reality would scare us; they'd rather see us paint a picture perfect, correct.

Bullshit.

Walking on the tiled pavement, like a victim of long ago and an expert at bearing grudges, I'm thinking of the distortions that hang on museum walls and whose worth can feed a thousand Africas, that evoke so much emotion that the parquet floorings have to be padded for fear of people falling to their knees, or moved to tears that will flood a hundred Niles. I look up.

Fuck the lines. I pick up my pace, walk as I like, purposely adding extra weight on the cracks, free of all inhibition, not caring what I hit or miss. Free, and loving it.