rhythma - sean michael imler

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Rhythma Blog

Mbira on the island

I was a black man with a brother, mother and father, living on some island where we had been exiled to. Is was a nice place with some big houses and farms. There was some sort of boundary around what items we were allowed to possess and I had gotten wind that someone was coming to take some of our things including our mbiras. I was very distressed over this and took my gandanga and left the house, looking for a place to hide it. For some reason I had removed the row of upper keys and was going to dismantle the whole thing but was running out of time. I remember cliffs that had colourful houses perched on them. I found a chicked coupe near a barn that had a top that could be slid open so I stashed my parts in there and went rushing back to the house but I was too late. There was a large woman in the house that was just leaning down to pick up my deze that had two more mbiras in it. I was frantic but there seemed nothing that I could do. She walked out the front door and I followed her. Right in front of my eyes, she started shrinking until she turned into a small catepillar. I wasn’t sure what to do but felt if I didn’t do something, I would lose my mbiras, so I picked her up broke the catepillar into smaller pieces. I felt dread for killing it/her but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. It was then that I heard the army coming to avenge her. My brother picked up a gun from somewhere and went running. The army, thinking that my brother committed this crime completely passed my by and took off after him. My family and I followed them until they corralled him in this open space. Suddenly, while surrounded, my brother pointed his gun at me. I was thinking that he was angry with me for killing the catepillar woman and was going to kill me. He pulled the trigger and vanished. Everyone looked around in disbelief, trying to figure out what had happened too him.

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