Upon fresh snow she walks, blue in the setting sun, shades of spruce spared touching her feet, pointing the way, like so many shadowy fingers growing long in twilight. White everywhere but. The cross. On her shoulder. The blood on her hands. The thoughts of him in her mind. 1944. December. France. Cold. Her eyes the luggage of more death at twenty than her grandmother at eighty. More priest than nurse. That sweet release. Hand as curtain. Shutting their eyes. Closing their lips. Silencing thoughts of mother. From blanched faces, blanched as the lights in their eyes, the light leaving those glassy orbs. Leaving. Thoughts of a life never to be lived. Like the girl never to be dated, held, kissed or loved. Of the home never purchased, the children neither birthed nor raised. All within sight. All beyond reach.
She was that girl. The one they talked to now, confided as their bowels voided. Shame blown from them with shrapnel. Vanity buried in foxholes overrun. In the gleam of bayonets falling like the ornaments of christmas from trees green and dark, limbs bowed with the cloak of incessant snow. A flash, a grunt, a sucking sound. Metal into flesh. From flesh. A soft sound, the entering. Somewhat softer still, leaving.
Lives in orbit. Just not around each other. Not around anything it seemed as he stood leaning against the back of the ambulance, scarecrow lean in faded green wool, his face as dirty as his uniform with the business of war. Looking older like they all looked older. A year here as a decade back home. What died, first, those ideals, dreams, like the life that would die later, torn from bone by Krupp metal, foreign as mortality. He stood, half a man. Known the way one knows repetition, as one's hand knows the burning of a stove, needing no language. Nothing prior.
Her breath grayed the air. Chest tight. Cotton stretched. Buttons strained. Lips red, the curve and curl of brunette bouncing. With each step. The static recording of snow, of smiles cracking in the December cold. A touch, warm, a blanket. Government issue. Scratchy. His eyes, two pools of white defying gravity. Pushing back death in the act of life, an urgency born of war, life seen, felt, feared, not by the day or even the hour, but the minute. Minutes, moments, like the constant drips in hospital. Each thrust a drip. Each sigh, life, living, now. He the needle. She the arm. A memory between two. Understood singularly, framed in context the way a thousand deaths are framed in individual stories, the way rivers are known from their tributaries, the way men know to slaughter other men without threat of their own, with hearts never the same.
She would love him this way. The idea, of being fucked, an idea of language, of act, beyond her home. This world, this war, death not of the old, not of time as much of mother, of father, of apple pie and country and everything known before. Blown, not buildings as much as the constructs of her world, the learning of classrooms, the lessons of dinner table, all this, consumed in the burning wages of war. Memory scorched as cities at night from the air.
Revenge in the back of an ambulance they would take, against this horror, this war. His ankles spreading hers. His dirt her dirt. They grunted. She braced. Pushed. Joined. Conspired. Against everything she had been taught. Everything he had seen. It was, she recalled, that night, in the back of an ambulance, somewhere in France, a small bit of heat amongst the cold, the greatest fuck of her life. Never again, never would she admit, had she lived, felt as alive as then. In that moment. With that boy, blown to bits, the very next day. His arms, in hers. His blood, her rouge. His heart, so alive the night prior, so quiet in light of day. In her bosom of white. White as the snow stained in her memory. As red as her lips. As red as the cross on her arm. As red as the slush of his life at her feet.
13 comments:
I can't seem to get comfortable with the writing in this piece. Here is a second go, posted in parts and pieces, for my own peace of mind:
She walks upon fresh fallen snow, each step the only sound on the small road winding deep into the forest. Her breath graying the air as mist, rising, dissipating in the cold December twilight. The sky is a darker shade of mauve pinpricked with fledgling stars. The trees bleeding their hue in the fading light. Even the snow looks more blue and gray than white. And still it falls as if the stars were weeping, or shedding or simply throwing confetti. Her hair frosted in the parade, her skin tight, cheeks hollowed, lips red as the cross on her arm; red as the cross on the ambulance she walks toward. Red as the blood still on her hands.
In the distance she sees him, leaning against the back of the ambulance, lean, a shadow of army wool, camouflaged with mud both dry and wet. He wore a cap, tilted and a smile that looked like the quarter moon on its side. He was twenty-one, a year older than her but in these many months, on this foreign soil, where death came not in the newspaper or from around the street but came in a hand held, a low whistle, a friend crying or body parts no longer recognizable as such, in this world, age and time held no meaning, or, as she said to him earlier, held some new meaning, like a new word not yet learned. Days and hours and even minutes no longer meant what they had. He had nodded. Then he kissed her, his taste on her lips, earthy, rich, a smell of tobacco and whiskey, of stale linen and plowed field. Maybe even coffee.
He had come with a friend to the hospital. The blood of brothers, maroon, still damp, pooling in the creases of their stained tunics draped over bone, the lower rim of their eyes weighted, stretched, pregnant such to make the eye look loose in its socket, larger than normal, so white against his dirty unshaven face. He didn't speak. The vastness of those white eyes just looking like twin moons over a foreign landscape of priest and nun, nurse and doctor, morphine and drip. He stayed to the end. Just looking as if nothing registered, the way a child looks on their first day of school. Standing in a corner, waiting it seemed, for someone to tell him what to do.
The floor was lit like christmas, lights blinking with each blast, the jingle of mercy against makeshift cots. He stood in a corner, away from the windows. He saw the hands I saw, those hands reaching for warmth to match the warmth in their veins. He saw eyes that saw what they wanted to see and hold conversations with faces fixed in smile, of eyes long teared dry, where nurses became mothers, girlfriends, lovers come to life as the light in their minds brightened in equal measure to the light in their eyes dimming. And he must have seen a vessel poured empty, a beautiful vase without flowers, becoming brittle without the loving waters nourishing local flora. I felt his water, in the way he looked. I saw what would be, his breath filling me, pouring, flowing over my lips, filling my lungs, the breath of life so very different from the breath of the men that held my hands holding drug induced hallucinatory conversations.
It is snowing, as it has been for days and everything is white and brown or some combination of white and brown slush. Only two other colors fill the landscape, green and red, the colors of christmas. The colors of war. She walks in the path grooved by the ambulance. She glances down at her blouse to see if the beating of her heart can be seen against the unwashed fabric, her small, petite torso a vitrine it seems, feels, for what lives inside, what threatens to burst forth like so many bubbles of life expiring, bubbles tinted pink, she had seen between young lips, always parted, always cracked in cold like tiny riverbeds dry. She looks at her hands. Forgotten to wash in the whirlwind, crimson as curtains between acts, shutting eyes, closing lips, echos of mother only in her mind now. They always called for their mother. Never the father.
My plan, as I first read this incredible piece of writing, was to go through it systematically for worse than losing the wholeness would be forgetting to mention any one of the numerous parts within that alone inspired such awe at their beauty, it's a wonder one was able to move further down the page.
Your opening confirms in my mind an image of your soul, not an image, more like an aura, floaty, gauzy, extraordinary, magnetic, cannot and do not want to take ones eyes off. As lovely as the world can appear to me, as warm and wonderful and inspiring as the human soul can be, as complex and fascinating and suprising, I'm constantly left in awe by how you see, how you tune into, how you reflect, how you capture the essence of those things in your writing. Poetic soul. Clear vision, honed, through your eyes, your words, all of those things are enhanced, found in their truest, purest glory. And with every piece, appreciation grows not only for the wonder of life, love, compassion, strength, connection, balance, every aspect of life and those who live it, but the heart aches with the utter beauty of this gift given so freely, of allowing us to see what you see. Upon fresh snow she walks, blue in the setting sun, blue, memories of as many winters as I can remember, of evening walks, and the voices of loved ones, birds twittering, scarfs and gloves and icy air and the peace of evening, warm dinners in the belly, snowmen left for the night, candle lights in windows, stars twinkling above, the smell of snow, the crunch underfoot, through these I search, fast forwarding through my mind, and a pause every once in a while as I realize with full awareness for the first time only for the word written here, blue, I've seen that blue. blue in the setting sun, you saw, you kept, complete awareness, complete appreciation, an artist, a poet, wholly receptive, wholly responsive, crucial and teaching.
shades of spruce spared touching her feet, pointing the way, like so many shadowy fingers growing long in twilight.
How I love these words. A beautiful narrative of an image known and written of so many times throughout time and literature and personal recollection, branches as arms, twigs as fingers, and herein is shown just how immeasurable your creativity is, sparklingly natural, novel and lovely, uplifting in the way that the ocean is, alive, active, constantly and ever stimulating, the ocean is the ocean but never is it just ocean, oh my, :-D, here I go again, too awed to make sense and yet unable to stop attempting..like so many, it is the upward scale, the thrilling, heart-capturing rise of this expression, nostalgia playing a part, language of yesteryear, full and rounded, language that requires the whole body to say it, that feels so good to mouthe, that has a part in what makes this part of the first paragraph so enchanting. (setting sun,) shades of spruce spared (touching her feet), music and love, poetry, just listen to that shades of spruce, heart jumping in time, neck hairs rising, shades of spurce, I just said those words aloud 10 times in a row and the shivers only increase with each mouthing. shadowy fingers growing long in twillight, such vivid imagery, to read is to be enclosed within, to feel wrapped, covered. To love and be loved, by language.
The original words written about the eyes having seen more made such an impression, I hear those at the same time as I read these changed ones. Unable to seperate them at this point, and so instead let me just say that the way in which you have listed the facts, singular, matter-of-fact, masterfully..how do I say..like a google map, the whole world appears at first and by simply entering a location and pressing the plus sigh, once, twice, down it shoots us to a specific location, great distances travelled in the blink of an eye, the picture closing in on, focusing upon, bam, bam, bam...And, not least following the musical of the opening sentence, somehow both a contrast and a similarity occurs in regards to the impressiveness of the images you are creating, each training the mind, painting the picture, one full of varying form and colour so to speak, the other bold, primary. Primary blue against the blue in the setting sun.
And eyes, rather than repeating all that has been said about eyes, than talking of windows and souls and life lived, memory and experience and thought and emotion and heart and soul in eyes, than of what we all know, I'll say just that with your characteristic simplicity, your incredible ability to say a thousand words in sometimes just one, working upon the reader's mind like the first domino in a line of them that would go on forever were we able to keep watching as closely, branching lines - the first falls, eyes (mind) follows, at the right pace, exciting, opening and then not in any lessening way, enhancing in fact, there comes a point where one just stands watching those thought processes spiral off into different directions, watching in utter fascination and admiration at the vastness, the limitlessness, the speed, knowing that each path travelled is a never-ending journey, a journey with an open-ended invitiation that could be taken at any point, and that right there is the most delightful part of the whole process, and the moment too where appreciation culminates, catapults, for that very first domino piece. And that is when all one can say in response is wow. What a rush. What a course (of dominos) follows your every first. What a writer.
More priest than nurse
Later will come in my comment or rather in your writing as I move through it anew the highest point at which I was aware of your love and knowledge of history, not facts in a book, dates, events, but of the personal, individual affect, an intimate knowledge, a deep, living knowledge, ongoing in the sense of emotion, gosh, what I mean to say is, or rather what I shall again attempt to say is that as (eg) Kyra, as the boy, there are numbers, there are masses, there is a story, a life, a heart, a mind, a soul, a circle of connection, each a world entire so to speak behind each and every one. This one sentence tells so great a story, or rather not tells but shows us the book, shows us that there are pages and pages, this one sentence is a statement...to what can one compare it but hundreds of others within your writing, somehow in ways that have little directly to do with consciousness, we receive, four words upon the page and yet, and I suppose I should say superficially for we know not details, we are not her, as the words are read immediately is born a place, a space in the heart, that without knowing knows, without exploring remembers, not in a seeing sense, but like an aroma, faint, that has lingered, an understanding not of unknown moments and thoughts and experiences but that they exist, a realization of the enormity of what is not known. More priest than nurse and as the mind seeks to learn, books that have been read, films that have been seen, poetry that has been felt are remembered, I don't know how to tell you how much you are able to suggest with so 'little', only that you do, have that huge capacity.
Girls kissed, again, the first draft is so clear in my mind even as I am reading this, weaving around one another, showing how sometimes the smallest of edits can make all the difference.
That sweet release, more often, at least in our daily lives a reference to something quite different, which serves as I read to make the expression already praiseworthy still more deserving. As a link between what comes before and what comes after, it demands time, consideration, in the same way that priest did. Most of us, alive and well, perhaps even seldom attentive in regard to our motality, and perhaps when thoughts of death do occur, it is the final act, the after and the leaving behind, and not so much the events leading up thereto, that in the end it could be as it was for the people of whom she is thinking, a release, a release so welcome it is refered to as sweet. Small wonder, not wounds, not missing limbs, not blood and guts so to speak, but final moments, far from home, future lost, relief that eyes seeing saw much. To be the one to perform the physical action, closing eyes that no longer see, closing mouth that will no longer (or ever) kiss, the last hands to touch either side of death.
A sidenote, just because as I was writing, I thought of when my paternal grandmother died. I had never met her, and never really got either. She died one hour before myself, my father and my older brother arrived. So the first time that I met my grandmother, she was dead, although, and this may sound very bizarre, I got to know her pretty well over the next 1-2 days. Her body laid out, her children and grandchildren telling me stories as she lay amongst us. My interest so genuine, at least I think this is why, a special exception was made that I be the one to push her coffin into the fire, though women were not, let alone 10 year old girls, normally allowed this far into the ceremony. But this was not what I wanted to share, rather that when we arrived, they (her other children) had tried to close her eyes, several times, unsuccessfully, she was waiting everyone agreed to see my father when as he then moved his hand over her lids, they closed and she looked so peaceful. I guess with that I just wanted to add by saying so in an unrelated way also that to be the one to do so, to perform this action, is meaningful. Singular words sometimes as you know for more than meaning or sound, for the greatness of the word itself, I loved reading blanched not once but twice.
Time, not having enough, not death is what is frightening, of missing things, of not achieving or experiencing the things that we would like to, not to say we would, but to be robbed of the opportunity, the chance to pursue, to experience, and this to my mind is what you have expressed so well in the part that speaks of girls unkissed and children unborn. We are, unless something happens in our lives that makes us appreciate that nothing is a given, the younger we are more inclined to expect certain things out of life and to hope for others, that up ahead are days and months, time, in which to seek and find, and even much of the time as we grow older and become more aware of just how quickly time passes and just how quicly something can happen to stop us in our tracks so to speak, still, most of the time, we trust we have more time, and then we are reminded there are those that though we may feel we haven't nearly finished yet never got as far as we did, never got to those things that now are a part of our past, and well, I've lost the particular point that I was making, but in any case most effectively, most stirringly you have shown the injustice, the sadness of so many, individual lives cut short by war.
Wonderfully done is paragraph two, the other side, from their view still, but within a somewhat similar fate for the woman. Fast many years forward and a child may have been born to her, a house purchased, a marriage made, but there, France on a cold December day in 1944, amidst pain and death, she stands, living a fate few women her age have endured, eyes ageing. Men, and women.
confided as their bowels voided. Shame blown from them with shrapnel. Vanity buried in foxholes overrun. In trying to think of the right word, I've come up with courteous, respectful, no curbing of fact but the manner in which you have handled the information being shared, depicting as much in the choice of language as by what is being imparted, the lack of shame, of vanity, an entirely different interaction between these men and that girl, the narrative moves between and beyond the contrasts, this is such an amazing piece of writing, truly wonderful. Time and circumstance and two people and the rules, wrong word again, can change so drastically, beyond imagination. The previous paragraph, of homes and kisses, rises higher still Christmas ornaments are used to describe gleaming weapons.
A soft sound, the entering. Somewhat softer still, leaving. Confirming yet again your natural talent, this stuff cannot be learned, it cannot be forced, I don't even know what to say about this except to wonder whether, though knowing how you would and have responded, you are aware of the rightness, the brilliance, the immense impression the way in which you write leaves. Sounds described, so vivid, they sound out (onomatopoeic) as one reads them. Wonderfully done.
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