keyboard hits the ceiling

When the keyboard flew and hit the ceiling, I threw my hands in glee and promised never to write about pain again. It sears the windows and singes the bed sheets. It does not smell nice at all. Like an effusion of stinking pus, it bursts wildly from my skin and oozes out with precision onto the tiled floor, plugging every crack and licking every crevice. Then it creeps up the walls and meticulously plasters its surface with a generous amount of goo. When it solidifies, I usually lay a rug over it and, protected by the rug, I tread ever so lightly onto its hardened surface. At once, carnality is made sacred. The banal is elevated to the sublime. It quietly sends tingling messages through the rug, through the pores of my feet, and into my veins. Borne by my fierce blood, these messages seep into my innards and slumber there like kids tucked in their beds. Then I dance the wild dance of ambivalent longing to the song of a muted banjo, careful not to wake up the little deposits of goo in my system. It is not my habit to disturb pain when it rests within me. I let it be and we celebrate together.

So, on that night when the keyboard flew and hit the ceiling, I simply swung my hands cheerily in the air like a nutcase catching flies for dinner. Rationality, with its hands akimbo, sneered down at me and demanded that I rant and rave and tear my hair off in despair. I said I couldn’t because I’m totally bald, not unless he meant my pubic hair. Besides, I love swimming with pain. We do dolphin kicks and tumble turns together. After that, it gives me a kickboard. Something to practice your strokes with, it says, this will buoy you up and make you numb most of the time. I accept the gift and smirk. Pain touches my cheek lightly and roars hideously with mirth.

A curious relationship we have, pain and I. I know whenever it’s coming. I know which door it would come from. And I prepare for its arrival with a repellent heart and an indifferent face. Even when it suddenly throws tantrums like making the keyboard fly and smash into the ceiling and crash like a million dice thrown to spell one’s fate, I remain composed. I just throw my hands up in the air and laugh at its folly. Which was exactly what I did on that balmy night the keyboard collided with my ceiling. I tried catching the keys as they rained down on me but managed to catch only one, that which bore the letter “N.” For a while, I thought of stringing all the keys like beads to make a blasphemous rosary, but I thought it was too obscene. The keys just lay on the floor with their letters smiling, taunting me to play with them once again. But no, I have promised never to write about pain again. The smell of burnt fabric sickens me. And I cannot afford to have another plaster of goo on my walls. The keys, injured though they were, offered to articulate my thoughts for me. I said “Do as you please, this is a free world. Even broken keyboards have rights.”

That was how this post was written.