The yesterdays that were mine

Death by music block A

There is always a moment you know it's all fallen apart. The moment of too late for return, the deciding seconds that shove you into the deep end. Then every moment after that, every second, every day and breath and thrash is an attempt to escape what has befallen. She knew the moment her life was thrown onto the tracks. She was fifteen years old, lying on the cold cement pathway behind music block A, her body too heavy to move, to even wipe at her cheeks, to hold herself.

How long had she been there? She asked herself. She didn't know. What she did know was that it was long enough for the sun to set, and for the stars to glimmer above her. How unfair, she thought, that those stars could shimmer on that night, and she had to merely stare at them from so far away. In that moment, she felt closer to the core of the earth than to her own being.

That was her moment, her silent knowledge that it was all unmendable now. She had ended up there at the hands of others, not of her own volition. Those violent hands of a group of boys who seemed to derive a kind of pleasure from tearing her apart. Her name was Nana Komore, the unlucky one, the chosen one, it seems.

In the later hours, between 7 or 8pm, she walked to the train station. She didn't feel any thoughts, only the rub of the bruises on her thighs as she walked. She thanked the flesh on her bones which saved her from the due broken limbs she was promised. Her hair, which had been pulled out of its ponytail, hung on her shoulders. Nana could feel the knots of lying on the ground tickling her neck and cheeks.

Once she stood on the platform, she went to the bathroom. It wasn't at all shocking to see her face. It looked as if it was sinking into itself, her eyes bloodshot, lips puffed up and cracking at the sides. She held herself together long enough to begin wiping the dirt from her face. Her body felt like it was held together by glitter glue...so when she realised that she didn't have anyone but herself to save her, she broke apart.

Silently, so as to not alert people of her existence, she sobbed silently, curling into herself over the dingy metal sink of the train station. She was snapped away from her moment of weakness when a mother and her small daughter walked in. Nana knew she wouldn't say anything, and that mother probably thought she looked worse for wear. Nana smiled at the lady kindly, to assure no harm.

Nana stepped on the train, on the busiest carriage, and took a seat. She counts the seconds it takes for the train to leave the station; exactly 34. She looks down at her hands, flexing her fingers in and out. She had punched one of them today, and that is what landed her being left on the ground, lining what she felt was her dying. Her knuckles stung, from where she made contact with Nakamato Masashi's face.

Nakamato Masashi, the boy, the highschooler, who deemed Nana too big for her own boots the day she met him. It's almost comedic, how he found Nana to be his biggest threat for a reason unknown to her. It was as if she was paying the price for a great crime she never committed. It was a substance of him doing it just because he knew he could.

Once Nana had reached her house, and walked in to find her mother lying face down on the floor, a half empty bottle of wine on the coffee table above her. She scoffed, knowing that her mother wouldn't hear her. She marched over and ripped the bottle from the table, taking a long swig before she walked over to the sink and poured the remaining wine out, watching the maroon liquid slosh down, swirling the drain.

She found some food in the fridge and ate next to the open window in her room, music playing, TV on all the while so she didn't have to sit with her thoughts. Nana looked over the sea of the red light district. She found comfort in the way it never seemed to quiet down there, sure it was because of the influx of sexwork on a monday night, but at least it was alive.