When the music was turned on, it was like the chords of my very heart were the ones being tuned. I danced with my hips, my eyes and my heart. The music was beautiful. By the time it reached a crescendo, my hips were contorting like a snake going up a tree. It was love, pure love. The kind of love that hurts the walls of your heart, threatening to break them. The kind of euphoric love that if you are not forewarned, can lead you straight to that point of no return. The kind of love that promised heaven with a tincture of hell. He shook his beggars in tune with my gyrating hips. He looked deep into my eyes and I felt them reaching my soul. His eyes grabbed my heart as his hands grabbed my hips. I contorted my body in rhythm to his pounding heartbeat.
I willed the song to never end. It could never end, right? Some music should last forever. The rhythmic guitar should never stop playing. The ecstasy is meant to stay forever. My hips were meant to be in motion forever... Then I felt the beats slowing, he took a step back, and another, and yet another. He found a seat and sat down. The dance floor cleared. I unwillingly slowed down my swinging hips. My animated hands. My pounding heart.
He was just another ordinary man with millions of flaws. He couldn't give me a quarter of earth leave alone giving me heaven. His eyes became cold like yesterday's ugali. The stench in his mouth replaced the aroma of his kisses. I felt his cold stare on my back every time I walked.
He started talking fast like a vacuum cleaner. Our usual calm conversations developed into shouting contests. He started coming home in the dead of night, sometimes not coming at all. The days he was absent were lonely at first, but they became my best days in the end. He never missed me when he was away, I never missed him back. The talks of taking me to Dubai evaporated into thin air.
Then one evening when the sky was poignant with rain, he slapped me. Then another. And another. The slaps soon turned into kicks. The kicks turned into punches. My face looked like map of Africa, for the scars on my face could make up the borders of the countries. The biggest punches made Algeria, Sudan, Lybia and DRC on my face. The smaller ones made the Djiboutis and the Gambias. He started locking me in the house, for who wanted to see a walking African nation?
Then one day I remembered who I am. The real me, the me who used to dance with her heart and laugh with her soul. The merry-making me who never passed up a chance for a good, hearty laugh. I picked up my stuff and left his mansion in the dead of night. I never looked back. I walked and walked until my legs carried me back to the safest place that I knew, home. When the music finally stopped, I realized it was just another ordinary song, and him, another ordinary man.
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