24. Sunday
The curtain is swaying lazily like a reluctant dancer’s skirts. It would be a skirt; a pretty one at that with the creeping, spidery patterns of yellow, purple and white roses.
The curtain is swaying. In the half-puffs slipping through the slightly parted slates of glass, slightly parted like lips savouring a lingering kiss just ended, eyes closed in recollection. The door is banging. A rhythmic dub-dub almost timed, as though the wind is playing to staves. The curtain is swaying, lazily like Sunday; like today, just sauntering dreamily while I, heathen bones and mind and all must acknowledge there is something in a Sunday, something even a hermit like myself feels. Something lazy and peaceful as death, something intangible but thick in the air; a mist of calm and sloth.
The curtain is swinging, twirling, twirling around itself like a sundress in a breeze. I would if I could, stitch this fabric, it and its essence of summer photographed onto it, into a rolling meadow where violets and buttercups bow and nod and flirt with this wind. Marigolds smiling gaily at the sun with petals of mimicry outstretched like children’s tongues rolled out to taste the rain. I would carry it there and lie still as the rolling breeze barrels over, rearranging my hazy thoughts.
The curtain is twirling as the wind tumbles through and over me chilly, where I lie too tired to read any more. Too lazy rather, Sundays are for sprawling like dogs in the sun. I am sprawled on the floor trying to nap. If only those kids would stop their noisy affairs, or move away, just far enough to merge with the other sounds of Sunday: the rising, falling tones of distant traffic, girls laughing, a shrill whistle. I can’t hear the words enough to even make out the language spoken. I wish those children would join that symphony, not protest it as they do now.
The curtain is waving the day bye. It must be three o’clock now or somewhere thereabout. I don’t want to go look at the time. I’d rather enjoy the bliss of the day, this calm, incubator of flowery thoughts, sweet ambience. Why disturb it by leaving before it should end, sometime at about five when the distant Sunday soundtrack heightens to assail the air as noise with the kids’ voices, when the roles of the real world must begin? Let it linger, like the wind over my bare skin, my back tingles at the sensation. It’s like… the wandering finger of a loved one starting up to linger halfway, twirling, twirling, drawing invisible circles of fire.
The tooth-edge of the wind has become more pronounced against my meaty back. I put on my t-shirt and lie down again. Before I close my eyes I see the curtain twirling. Swing-dancing with the wind as I long to twirl you in that meadow with those violets stuck in your hair, gay buttercups cajoling our dance, spring grass beneath unshod underfoot. Let me close my eyes, I hear sleep creeping in to steal me, if it wasn’t sent by you to steal me to your side, then I hope it is you disguised in it, to unveil yourself behind my closed eyelids.
Sunday feels like a quiet nap on a raft and a lake. That should feel like the dance of wooing too; that gentle rocking sideways of the body like the wooed sprit, that rolling, unrolling, of sleep like a large blanket finally enfolding you. I wonder what death feels like, will there be a masseuse, like the wind and this curtain flailing like palm leaves making air fresh for royals?
But that keenness in the breeze bounding through parted lips of glass and through the curtains like a cough evading a handkerchief has returned. I always feel colder just before I fall asleep. Why don’t I get up and close it? Maybe because there is something in the aesthetic of the whole thing; that curtain twirling like your hair in the meadow, the door banging like you falling into me after twirling, like the curtain, in that meadow as I often dream awake, twirling and twirling with violets in your hair, twirling, your dress as flowery as the blossoms of the meadow ballooning under the perfumed air, you are twirling, twirling, smiling to the sun like the marigolds, twirling and twirling and finally dizzy you collapse, onto me, with a bang.
There is something annoying about that banging, about the wind cutting into my bare back while I am trying to fall asleep. And dream of you. So I get up, close the window and come back to my spot on the floor next to my water tumbler, my pen, and that heavy, sleep inducing book I just tucked away. There is a black notebook too for trapping fleeting thoughts. I open it and, as I begin to write, the curtain winks at me. Hummond, my imaginary friend, is stuffing his pipe from the lip of the window, where you sat when you visited last. As though drawn from a distant reverie he casts a solemn glare my way and says, “I miss her too, and it’s a long way to December.”
This piece was shortlisted for The Varnish Prize for Fiction 2025.
Philani A. Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born writer of prose, poetry, drama, and film. He is the author of four poetry collections, including The Testament of Black Jesus, and is the founding editor at Elane Arts, a publishing consultancy based in Bulawayo. Philani's work has been translated into over five languages, published in over thirteen countries, and has received over a dozen literary awards.