I sit at the table.
I:
I did not choose you. I did not choose you. I did not choose you. And more often than not, I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know how to carry you, hold you, caress you, dress and portray you. How to hide the slight crook in your nose or the lie of your lips. Ja. Ek weet nie. Ek … ek …But here we are. Sitting. At this table. You and me. Sitting. Walking. Dreaming of guns being shoved to our foreheads and drowning in water so dark I can’t see my hand in front of me. Every day I wake up and a prayer runs through me to ask that I could be good. To be good to myself, to others, to the ones who look and can’t see through you. To ask to hold my tongue, not let it slip and spit out something that might not sound right, to stand still. Be still. Wait. Still I watch you try. I watch you try to not take, to not sit at the table and eat the second plate, reach for the third helping, devour the desert, always ice cream and malva pudding in fla floating and consuming itself. I watch you try and I watch you fail and it revolts me. Repulses me. Your need to always have more. Take more. Ask for more. You always ask for more, when you already have so much on your plate. I suppose it’s because you’re scared and hungry and because when you chew your mouth is full and goes quiet and I don’t speak. And no one can say anything if I don’t say anything. If I disappear into the plate and the food and the chair. Chewing, chewing, chewing.
And so the prayer dissipates through the day, dissipates at the table as you chew and I don’t speak and at night I get into bed with you. Alone with you. Nestled in white sheets, in a white room with white walls and the white light whispering for us to close our eyes. Listening to you breathe as we realise that the gun to my forehead, is held by my own hand. Firm and steady. Yelling: ‘Who are you?’ Yelling: ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What are you doing here on soil that does not want you?’ Yelling: ‘What are you doing here?’ Ja. Iets soos dit. Iets soos …
You betray me. And I betray you. We try. And fail. And try again. Try to ignore the voice yelling, the gun to the forehead, the hand that holds it, the table that falls silent with your coarse and undignified laughter. The lips, the tongue, the swallowing away of the amen after the prayer. Try to ignore that I do not know what to do with you and that you were unknowingly sewed to me, planted here.
But I do love you, you know, I do.
Kanya Viljoen is ook besig met ’n meestersgraad in Drama- en Teaterstudies en wel aan die Universiteit van Kaapstad. Sy het onlangs gedebuteer deur die toneelstuk RAAKby die Vrystaat Kunstefees 2018 op die planke te bring. Dit is as Beste Produksie genomineer en het ook twee KykNET Fiësta-nominasies ontvang. Kanya is verder laasjaar as Beste Opkomende Regisseur deur die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Teater (SATMag) aangewys en is hierdie jaar vir ’n Fleur du Cap Teater-toekenning benoem. Kanya se Die man en die maan vertel deur ’n kombinasie van bewegingsteater en poëtiese monoloog die magiese verhaal van ’n gesin wat deur die maan verskeur word.
3 thoughts on “A Conversation with My Skin”
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