AXIS

A story begins here, and you will read it. You will have thoughts that oppose one another, and some that breathe in unison. Will you place yourself within this short story, or will you read it as though peering through a window? However, you choose to see the young bookseller in this tale is up to you, but consider this: how will her existential dread and cycle of overthinking compel you to keep reading?

This is Part 2 of The Thinker and The Thought.
Read well, and read consciously.
Enjoy.

The end of Spring in England is sometimes conflicting because the country is so desperate for it to be summer; when you mean the country, you mean the people. They want it so bad that they would leap out of their skin and offer it for sacrifice if that could help with Mother Nature’s decision to let them have what they are waiting for the whole year. However, the mother has always been clear to us stupidly hopeful fools, that the country we reside in is not close to the equator. Within all this, you wonder beyond like you always do and imagine what The Mother would reply with if we did pray or beg her.

The people:

Oh, Mother, haven’t we dwelled with rain and misery for far too long? Isn’t it time that we reap the rewards of a country that continues to leech off us? We give and we give, and we understand that we, the people, are not in a country where enjoyment is supposed to be its selling point, but work is. We understand that we wake up, shower the sweat, and salt off and head to our designated jobs and repeat the cycle. So, Mother hears our prayers and blesses us with your friend, the sun.

The mother:

You are not Costa Rica; you are not Kenya, and not even Italy. But you are in England, a country where you hopelessly beg and pray for the sun to come out, and if you’re lucky, I could grant a week of scolding weather, but that’s as much as I would grant. The rest of the summer will have fluctuations of warm breeze, but would I be true to my divinity if I didn’t shower you with rain? Isn’t that what you are known for? So, I should help keep the standards of your beloved country high and shower, no… thrash you with water that seems like I want it to flood.

That’s what you think The Mother would say, something cruel and twisted but all-knowing like that. The mother isn’t sweet and tender-hearted, she is someone who can cause devastation, she is someone who can recreate history and decimate the future. She should be feared not romanticised. However, people are not mature enough to have that conversation and you are not willing to give a speech on it.

Well, it was a good day for her as the rain thrashed against your windowpane. You watch the droplets race down against one another and think, do the droplets know that you watch them race, do they know how insignificant they are to you or your surroundings? But why do these things make you emotional, why did it make you feel a slight twinge in your chest that you had belittled these droplets, this water? You don’t know of course, and you don’t dwell on it as it is far too depressing on a Tuesday morning.

Grabbing the umbrella that seems as tired as you are, you give it a shake to wake it up and maybe it was for you too. Because it seems that life has come to the point where you can’t help but see the tiredness that resides in this inanimate object but why on God’s green Earth can you relate to this umbrella?

Mhhm… yes you know why because even though you shower and choose the outfit for the day and Moisturise with shea butter and oils, comb your 4c type hair and slick it back as best as you can and put on shoes that don’t feel like your shoes and add blush to cheeks that feel old but young, and gaze upon yourself in the mirror you still have this underlying feeling of tiredness. Is that nonsense, is that stupidity, is that foolishness? Mhhhm… you think about it for a minute, 2 minutes, 3. No, it’s not it’s just your mental state maybe losing it. Ha, sense is finally coming again.