The Voiceless Stares

29th January 2009

Dear reader,

‘The fist made of flesh and bone, rises up against the un just’.

Silent screams filled the air as I sat in shame, covered by the omnipresent shadow of my oppressor; I knew something had to be done. I had lived a life surrounded by misery, beaten by my dad, lost in an idle vehicle of restless turmoil, something in me felt like it was about to give. Like a shattered glass releasing its contents in mere moments, so too was the wailing fist as it shattered through the thick, dense shadow that overlorded me. No more sitting on the ground with my legs tucked underneath me, no longer was my head hanging in shame, no longer did the tears well up in the corner of my eyes, I was a phoenix, with the ashes and all. My eyes focused in on his, my fist tensed so much that it made my bare knuckles wane under the pressure of such a grip, I then leaped from the ground, a grunt had pursed its way through my taut vocal cords and I landed knuckle against jaw. The impact against the bony point of my middle knuckle reverberated throughout my whole arm; the tingle of such a clean hit was followed by an intense sting, followed by the realisation of my exuberant outburst.

I stood amongst the multitude of voiceless stares. I gripped my hurting right hand with my left, I felt the pain ease under the tension and I scanned the room for acceptance of such violent intent. I caught the eye of one girl, who quickly turned her head away, another boy stood there looking at me and directed my attention to the result of my painstaking effort. The crowd pulled apart into two files leaving a lane of free space for me to walk through. Whispers began to emerge as I tip toed through the valley of human presence and my head started to move on its own accord as if wanting to see what the tacit commotion was about. Eyes widening, heart pacing, sweat forming and then suddenly clarity. What was I witnessing? Is this even possible? Mike Landrow the oversized beast that had verbally man handled me was now a frameless feature of the back wall. Now understand this, when the fight had broken out, there was a line of kids covering my retreat to the hallway which lined the very same back wall. Even still, the back wall was over 10 meters away! I had clean hit this kid over a bunch of other kids and 10 meters away no less, and the best thing being I was clearly under half his size.

Lunch that day held a lot of interesting conversations. Two hours of class time had given the rest of the student’s time to form their questions, pass notes on how the class bully had to be taken to hospital and inform non-witnesses of the morning’s events. As I had initially expected, I was forced to sit by myself at the beginning of lunch, I opened my brown paper bag and lifted the tuna and cheese sandwiches out and began to unwrap it. Within moments two of the boys from my English class came and sat down beside me. As they sat, I knew it was genuine, they didn’t stare at me, and there was no hesitation or intent to harm me. How did I know this? Well coming from a life time of abuse and seeing the signs written all over my mother’s face, I think I had a pretty clear understanding of these things.

We’ll stop here and things tomorrow should get very interesting!