white bed

Author's name: Afra Mahmoud

A shaky scream echoes back to me: “What?!” Mountains of ants. Each one grabs a grain of sand, piling it on top of each other in a strange arrangement resembling a military bunker, sealing off the cave entrance. “What?!” My body swells from pinches that I don’t know where they begin or end. My entire body is agitated, reddened, and bloody. I lean against the darkness so that some sharp stones dig into my hand, and I propel myself toward the nearly closed entrance, to smash it. “Yes!” The light rushes with the force of a thousand horses, piercing my skull. My eyes turn white from the sudden glare. I close them. I calm down. I open my eyes to a sudden attack that pulls me upward. And the army of ants below rearranges its ranks and pulls me down. Ah, I stand in between. I am torn apart. I am pulled from every direction. I am split. I don’t know what to choose. I love it, and it hates me. I hate him, yet he loves me. I don’t know how to gather myself. Great with his golden wings, he spreads them out, covering the blue horizon. He pulls my left arm towards his sky. My right hand is devoured by armies of ants, dragging them back to their burrows for a coming season. I shout to myself: “Now.” I brush the ants away from my right hand and memorize the location of the burrow. I hold on to it tightly. It soars.