Dawn's Soft Red Underbelly

A short story (?) / random imagery-heavy prose, after the film Delhi-6, and what one of its lyrics - “bhor bhaye, tori baat takat piya (the dawn has broken, I wait for you)” - sparked in me. About skies and suns and cracks and mirrors, about hiding and then facing yourself. 

“The dawn has broken;

I wait for you…”

And instantly I imagine the sky with cracks in its wall, the plaster worn, the paint chipped off and falling away. 

It is not quite blue yet, not at this hour, but instead a sort of pearly, dying gray, comforting in its quiet, cloudy melancholia, something beautiful about its colorless, noiseless pain. It suits us, matches our urge to mellow down and trample everything loud and human about us. It saves us from the sun, from light, casts its shadow over beating hearts. Rendered blind, we welcome it in. Gray.

But - and although I did not hear it when it first cracked - the sky is coming away now. Not breaking yet, but broken all the same. Sounds familiar. Through the fissure, something red, tangerine, saffron, tender, fresh (alive, alive, alive) awaits. The bone-white ribs of the sky opening up to reveal a fleshy core.

I watch from the window as a flaming half-sun leaves its light across the pages of my book. I look up in awe, this strange, just-born fire emanating from the crack. It teases me, tugging at the clouds, showing me only flashes of itself and nothing more. I imagine it giggling as it disappears back behind the familiar gray hills. A child spilling paint on the floor. The light is moving, though the crack is firmly in place. A red streak across gray stone. 

Dawn’s soft underbelly finally turned towards the world. 

As the minutes pass and I sit there unmoving, the empty space above the hills catches color as if on a slow burn flame. I picture various degrees of scarlet dragging their knuckles across the sky, clutching a wooden stick to help with the climb. Back to finish the old job, they beat the sky to a pulp. The crack nowhere to be seen, chipped gray paint raining down. Now, finally, with wounded purplish eyes, indigo cheeks, and a face red with shame - dawn slowly drips down the sky’s peeling lips. 

Out of all this debris, there is a soft shifting of rubble. A whisper. A hand fighting for place. With a quiet but persistent echo through the broken walls, something small, but impossibly large arises. From afar, it looks like the sun. But if you look closely, it is a mirror. 

The morning forces the world to face itself. It is too early yet, and cold, so it shivers and sends ripples through the seas. Faced with the sun - the mirror - it sneaks glances at a body it has not yet come to love. The world is like most of us.

Daylight stretches its fingers, its awful blessing atop the valley. The rooftops are streaked with gold, the people’s faces are ashine, an angelic light is sifting through the leaves. All this clarity makes us squirm. 

Now that the dawn is here, I cast my eyes downward. I wasn’t built to stare straight into a fire. No one else is at their window, or if they were, they’ve gone now. All of us back to avoiding mirrors. I dare to linger for a while more, out of curiosity more than courage. 

The sky makes a sound. The ancient, dusty fabric rips noisily to reveal unsatisfactory needlework. The red light was beautiful when I couldn’t yet name it. Now I can name it, so I can see it. I can see it, so I can hold it. I can hold it, so I can feel it. The mirror. Myself. 

I don’t like what I see. I wonder who spun me into being, and if I can be unraveled. And when my threadbare edges come away too, and I am torn at the seams, when a red crack arises - will I be sure to see them all leave? Everyone who was watching from their windows. 

Are we more than all the parts of ourselves we try our hardest to bury - in layers of gray?

The morning forces the world to face itself, so it charges us with duty:

I must love, always. And be kind, very kind. And give and give and give, and above all, learn to be good.

But, in the broad daylight, the soft red underbelly of my soul has finally turned my way. I see rotten flesh. Tender flesh. Real flesh. Red streak on gray stone. Bone-white ribs opening up to a fleshy core.

Despite what we’d like to believe, we are not beautiful. Or brutal, or even angry. And we are not kind, and least of all good. We are ourselves, all of us flaming half-suns disappearing behind our own gray hills, all of us red streaks on gray stone, all of us just-born fires learning how to burn. All of us dawn’s soft red underbelly. 

All of us broken, but never breaking. Never breaking.