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We used to peel the wings from the backs of dead flies and lick them like stamps. We would search the windowsills for their tiny, papery bodies and pick them up with tweezers, but in the jars they turned to ashy crumblings. Do you remember the days you spent running back and forth through the waves of sun that struck, yellow-white, through the glass windows? They began to stretch out, like one long afternoon (What's the longest word in the English language?), one long, white road winding through hedges of green, green, green. We were in a short story that someone else wrote about someone who dies and goes to heaven, only heaven's not what he expected it to be. But we didn't expect anything, and we made our giggly circles in bare feet through a house caught in a time trap. How did we get so lucky?
Exhausted after twenty-nine days of wandering, we fell into a field of tall grass and closed our eyes tight and heavy, the scent of night air a blanket over us. Since that moment, nothing has been quite the same. The rules of physics seem to fail here, over and over again, though there is no apparent reason why. I am waiting for the day when I don't have to breathe anymore, I'll be just like a ghost, only I can choose to touch the surface or feel all the way through something.
Inevitably, the clock moved again. Lost a friend to time, just like that. Echoes of you still linger in the fissures, here. Some days they come out and move around, like they're yawning or falling out of bed, and they knock over things and stumble about so loud that I can feel the furniture in my brain being overturned. You keep trashing and trashing this place with your pretty memory, and I can't stop you, 'cause you're gone, and you'll never be back to fill the jars again.
 Nehen · Sat Nov 11, 2006 @ 07:04am · 0 Comments |
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I live in a strong, grey house in the middle of endless fields of bright, tall wildflowers. The sun rises and sets predictably here; the grass grows green and long, and the stars are sharp-cut holes in a black blanket. I have plenty of things to occupy my time, for it is a big house in a big world.
Today, I picked flowers. Each flower had its own precious charm and its own way of making me smile. Only one flower made me cry, and it was a yellow-petaled flower with a tiny purple face in the center. As soon as I picked it, I realized my mistake: it was the most beautiful flower I had ever seen, and I don't even really enjoy the color yellow. It was a breathtaking flower.
I had barely picked enough flowers when dusk began to descend. I made my way back to the shadow of my empty house. Soon enough, the echo of my shoe on some harder material brought me to the front door. I slowly pulled it open and was inside. I was exhausted, and dizzy, too, from the colors my eyes had gathered.
The old staircase groaned at the brush of a toe. The doorway of my chamber was a black rectangle at the end of the hall.
My bed engulfed me like an inescapable cloud, and my body felt as heavy as water that has been holding itself up in the air. I needed to let go. My tiny chamber window began to shake with wind. Minutes passed, and the silence filled with soothing whistles. The sky began to crack. Finally, noise poured from the breach, an exhalation quite satisfactory. I fell asleep.
Halfway through the night, I awoke. The window breathed gentle rustles and whispers down my neck, but there was another sound, now, too. I listened carefully, and determined the source: above me. Mews melted through the ceiling-cracks and seeped through my skin. It gave me a feeling that was very strange. It was the music of hungry cats. They were trapped in the attic, and they were begging me to feed them. I couldn't get back to sleep after that, and in the morning, I was unsure of everything. The sound still lingered in my bones.
Nehen · Wed Oct 25, 2006 @ 04:56am · 0 Comments |
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