My
heart beats with irregularity sometimes.
I can feel it. I can feel it
pressed up against my rib-cage and sternum, between my lungs; breathe in, breathe
out. Ok. Again now. My heart beats irregularly. When I speak to you. When I see you, and I am not sure why. But I would guess it has something to do with
the raven on your shoulder standing proud and strong. This is dangerous. I imagine it has something to do with the
polluted ocean gazing back at me when I look into your eyes. I imagine there are better ways to describe
this but I am doing the best I can considering the circumstances. See, memory is a fickle thing, and she does
not lend herself to a proper translation.
Cruel as it may be I am trying my best here. Can you forgive me?
Because I am not sure if I should
call this a retrospective. I remember
experiencing some sort of flashover or flashbulb and it was like a white hot
coal burning through synapses; exploding in the brightest colors and fading as
the morning fog crawls across the open plains.
And still your polluted ocean moves with the moon, catching my attention
and pulling me in directions that no real compass could identify. Like I said before. I am trying to decide if I should call this a
retrospective.
What I really mean to say is that
you were priming me.
For what it’s worth. I was asking for it. I had found myself in this unknown
space. I oriented myself quickly,
identifying the major landmarks, the major players, and of course in which
direction the oceans lie, in the case of my escape they would be needed. But I have never been one to focus purely on
the physical and that is where you lost me.
Somewhere beyond the topography and the oceans you built a fortress and
God how the walls beat me down and disoriented me.
Or maybe this is all topographical
and I want to explode: ruin the map.
As far as I am concerned, and
believe me I might be concerned. This landscape is boring and dry. Cycles of rain and wind have had their way
and moved on to the oceans. There is
safety in emptiness though. That is why
the oceans attract such storms. They are
like the older kids you always knew.
They carried dangerous words and unfortunate objects. But we knew them anyway. We counted dangerous words among our
friends. We were armed to the teeth. We felt immeasurably large and life simple;
it was beautiful.
Flashbulb. Click.
I slipped into retrospective. But
God the pictures look good.
I don’t remember how these pictures
felt but I have rehearsed their meanings for three or more years and I can’t
quite shake the feeling that what I know now to be the truth of that moment is
skewed by wet faces, blood shot eyes, and water logged clothes. Dew drops are supposed to be beautiful. Not when they are frozen to your
eyelids. Not to think that it got cold
while you cried over which way to turn but you did and it is a scary thought
because now both paths have proven themselves desolate. They weren't always this way. I’m sure they were once alive. It is really just a question of sensory
details.
Speaking of sensory details. A note on my thoughts:
Tonight I will
continue my journey, wandering from tree to tree with no specific rhyme or
reason and no real intentions. See this
forest was once proud. Trees stood tall
and danced with each other in the wind and the snow. They slept under full moons while animals
explored territory foreign to human footsteps.
Rivers and streams once trembled and shrank, grew and jumped, fretfully,
frantically down mountainsides.
Sometimes they would disappear whispering devilishly beneath the forest
floor, leading to unknown worlds. This
place was vibrant and skies were the deepest blue. If any place were to burn bright, this place
would burn beautifully and it would be impossible to ignore the revolution and
the possibility of renewal. This was a
place of explosive possibility. It has
become a landscape littered with volatile ash and mud capable of a
transfiguration that degrades and carries away.
You can feel it
in each delicate step. This land is like
silk and glass. With each fragile step a
new crack begins. Spider webs weave
their disconnected lines across the landscape.
They will cut you open if you are not careful, and no matter how much
you hope it will, the blood left on those devilish traps will not save anyone.
In the early
days the swings were always empty. They
would sway in the wind as if the children had flown too high and simply
vanished into the sun. Icarus become far
too real. Yet, in recent nights simple
laughter is beginning to ring through the trees; it weaves its way through
blackened trunks and fragile soil, assaulting my ears. It was almost like
church bells, the laughter, it rolled and tumbled over itself like a landslide
with no explosion of sound. Yet, the
possibility was there. A ticklish
excitement rode on the wind and I would count. One. Two. Three. Four…Ten. Here I come.
Fast feet and even faster hopes.
Finding ghosts is no way to go about this search. I press madly onward
weaving through broken limbs and frayed ropes.
All in a desperate search for a tangible sign of life.
And when you
really start to think about it. Silk and
glass don’t mix. You would never expect
to find them together anywhere but here.
It is optically transparent. What
they mean by that is it is see through.
The glass that is. It is brittle
and fragile, composed of materials that have been worn down by the very hands
of a God. Slowly. Slowly.
It takes thousands of years, combined with heat and pressure that cannot
be imagined.
But there is
another way. A shortcut born of the
ferocity of storms and given to few. It
is glass born of pain and searing complication.
It is born of fire and water and it will grow old shortly. Lightning.
Instant ignition. Fire. Furnace heat. Explosive. It is instantaneous and quiet, and very much
alive.
What I am really
trying to say here is that in a land of silk stretched thin over glass you
can’t expect to catch up with ghosts.
What I am saying is the details are important, but I’ll never remember
them all.
This is just a
search for tangible signs of life. And
that is all we have ever done. We began
stumbling through forests and undergrowth overgrown and left to wither in a
succession of possibility wrapped up and packed in a vast world of
silence. A void filled with promise. Promise filled with obligation and intention.
Then.
Fire.
And we always
end right here, among the wasteland rubble trees. The children’s laughter, just a trick of the
senses. I always find him.
He lay like a
wet blanket, twisted and contorted, then frozen to the ground in some grotesque
manner reminiscent of all the pictures you tried to ignore. He is alive.
I assure you he is because I have spoken with him.
Hauntingly
beautiful words.
Touch the wine
to my lips.
He is
dying. I don’t have this authority.
Allow me the
bread.
I swear that’s
not how a soul should breathe. I tuck it
between his lips.
The body and
blood of Christ
Then it is
finished.
