Woman

There was a time not too long ago where people would take to the streets and dance. To enjoy. To mock. To let go.

Let it all go.

Anger. Emotions. Sanity. Peace. Consciousness. Hope.

Funny clothes and misshaped masks and delirious gleams. This was carnivale. It was dancing in the streets. It was seen as a freedom for the months of silence and acceptance, a time to finally be free.

But the riots and the vandalism and the despicable behaviour done through those hidden behind costumes and colourful masks and glazed eyes was soon too horrible to let be. At first what was a method of control, by letting people loose for one day and then shackled for the rest, became a nightmare. The strict injustice of the shackles on people made them so wild when they grasped a tiny bee's wing of freedom. Children were afraid to take to the streets. Women were advised to stay home. The elderly were hidden away to keep them safe from the looting and the terrors that might fright their delicate minds and bodies. Men stayed up at night to keep their families safe.

Soon only travelling folk and the townsfolk that found no harm in joining in, did so with fever and animosity.

The remains of carnivale scattered at the feet of my parents through their childhood. It would come and go, fleetingly, and more often than not it would leave the nightmarish wreckage of the self-contained psyche let loose. A fire to devour and shred all the calm and serene.

The nafs without any filters. Nothing to hold back the desires.

The drunken hoards of men and scatterings of some women through the streets was stopped. It was overwhelming, it was consuming. A kaleidoscopic nightmare stopped by a royal declaration. The newly crowned prince noted the deaths and destruction and demise of natural inclinations. He wrapped carnivale up in one hand and pummeled it in his fist.

And that was where it ended.

Father would tell John and I the stories to keep us off from carnivale. Thus, while other children were allowed at the fairs and the watered down mockeries of some renditions of carinvale we were scared off. Kept away.

'It was a nightmare,' Father would say right as the evening stars came out and we stared around us at the darkness in peace. 'We would lock our doors and they would break things outside. We clean up all the mess outside our houses and market. That's why you two can't go, they made their peace Satanic. Just because it is fun and games now, doesn't mean it came from a good place.'

So it was the right thing to do. To avoid something that came from the depths of the loose desires of people.

But why was it all flashing in front of me as an adult? Why was I seeing those nightmarish flashes of colour and darkness, as if...as if I had slipped back sixty years into those darker times of confusion. Why was my child lost to me when I had been warned so well? I might as well have thrown him to the lion myself.

I am sprinting through the last remains of carinvale. These simple fairs. I feel a burn in my eyes as I try to hold onto my sanity.These are the only pieces left, so tame that John took me to one with permission when I was seven. I clench my fists and search through the crowd for a fifth time. These fairs are so watered down from carnivale that my parents must've let it be. I choke on a sob and let it die in my throat.

Not yet.

The strangers and the vibrant fabrics across the stalls and the laughter and amusements that surround me make it hard to see my one familiar. Arthur.

Where is my baby?