799. one way

Mairi would take the train back to town. And at the station, which would be awash in unfocused color, a blurred brimming of mainly dark hues, she would purchase a one-way ticket. The sounds of the terminal would be clear, of wheel and rail and steam and torque against the muted backdrop of conversations murmuring like sweet summer grass. Her movements, she thought, would be slow, her hands gloved, and she would wear a brown felt hat to match her long coat, neatly buttoned top to bottom. All in order. The Chatelaine words echoed. All in order. Let action shape thought. Keep moving. Go through your progression. Yet, those images; of her arm hanging limp against her side; the look of the agent on asking if there would be a return; her mumbled reply; the sliding of her passage under the glass; all would seem a little too much like Bravo leaving Hyneria. There would be departure. But no return. As there was no appetite, no desire to engage, to speak of things as if they could be spoken. So she would watch the endless flowing into and out of the station. She would watch clocks ticking the seconds into minutes. Thoughts of Em painting would come to mind. Best not too many strokes she would say. Paint neither too thick nor too thin. Apply with a even sweep of hand across the surface lightly. Moving. Always moving. A place, Em would say, far, far from thought.

798. I love you

Zeke sat next to the bed as Grand slept. Sometimes just rocking, letting his mind wander over their years, as now, there would only be days. From time to time he walked to the bed and took her hand in his. Gently, rubbing her palm, his warmth becoming hers. She remained asleep, as quiet now as she was in life. A good life. Full of touches and looks, laughter and joy. Leaning down, he kissed her forehead, then her cheek. Her faint breath, barely a whisper. Her voice was that way too. In all their years, never a yell. Her tone, even now, as spring eternal.

He straightened her pillow and ran his fingers through her hair. She seemed to smile although it was hard to tell. She seemed to know he was there, as he said he would, that their union would be always, always held in love. Letting go of her hand, he pulled the covers up, kissed her cheek again before taking his seat, only this time, moving the chair a little closer.

When she had taken ill, he had begun a journal. Mainly, he documented his conversations to her as she slept, which was almost all the time. Late at night, when Kyra was safely tucked away and the house held but soft breath, he would read from the day’s entry. Sometimes he remained in his rocking chair and sometimes he would stand. Most of the pages were smeared. Emotion endless. The need to convey love, a love conveyed over decades, as urgent as their first days. So he wrote and read and cried. This was the routine. Day after day.

After several weeks, on a bright morning, for the bedroom faced the ocean and the window was always kept open, Grand squeezed his hand, opened her eyes and said, I love you. They kissed, her frail hand caressing his face as she had done so many times. Then she smiled again as her hand found rest and her eyes closed.

as you drive home tonight

As you drive home tonight, and the sky dims of night, think of the stars. We know them by darkness, their brilliance, their shine. And we draw the most magical myths from father to son. I remember morning recess as a small boy, maybe second or third grade in the cold courtyard. Standing on blacktop. Wearing khaki, my brown eyes still wet with innocence. I remember looking up into the pale blue sky and seeing a fading star. And I thought then as I remember now, they are still there, watching over me and waiting, till their time, again to shine.

797. singular summers

Kyra notes a conversation she had with Von shortly before he died:


My summers are singular. How many is hard to tell, but I feel some inexplicable calling. Mainly in dreams. He’s been coming more often. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes just holding and it is clear, he is holding me as once I held him. I see peace on his face and his voice is melodious. Our conversations, however, remain just beyond. Couldn’t tell you a single thing said. But make no mistake, these are not just dreams. There is no fear. Just a womb-like warmness where sound is muffled and light diffuse.


I listened to Von into the morning. He spoke of many things remembered and many more not. The envelope had remained unopened, and although he never spoke of it, I sensed he never made peace with that decision. Instead, the child became his life. He held nothing back, pouring himself into that newborn vessel, fueled, I thought, by his own premature parting. I left behind a grandfather. But Von left a son. I would say I understood, but I never had a child, so I never patronized him. I think he appreciated the listening. As Papa would say, one can heal a soul with the ears in ways the tongue cannot. I can’t say Von was ever healed, but I’d like to think his pain was a little less. I miss him. I miss the dignity and poise, of how he carried his sorrow.

796. night at noon

Sometimes, he said, it is hard to remember the ground when you are flying. And when you are flying, everyone on the ground looks so very small. I swear the man said everything slant. I told him this. He smiled but didn’t say anything. So I told him again. I had stopped as we were walking the beach at Valla. I still remember his gray hair blowing with the sea breeze and his white tunic flapping against his broad chest when he turned. I remember too warm water rolling over my toes then back to sea, exhaling as I could not. My ears whistling like seashells held to the wind. He knew the language of my gestures, for he knelt and smiled and motioned. The slant beam is straighter than the straight one. This is what he said. Then he bounced me off his knee, held his arms out wide and said, We have all of this. No more talk.

Von nodded, his finger sawing his lower lip. His eyes looked like wells. My words a bucket, bringing forth into light what I always thought later should have been kept in the dark. I too had learned this language, the tone of a look, the typography of a cheek either rising or falling. I have regrets. Some of which I can’t explain. I just know I sat in my chair as he sat in his, neither of us moving, neither talking. I didn’t know of time then as I do now. I didn’t know of windows and how they open only briefly before forever closing. As Papa might have said, it is hard to know the night at noon.

my window

I find that I am different from most other people. I make no value judgment in saying this for sometimes it seems a good thing and sometimes a bad thing, but either way, as far as I can tell and for as long down the walk of memory I can trot, it has been this way. From time to time the call of society knocks on my conscious and I venture out into the sun. I suppose this is where I notice the shadows the most. Once in the sun I realize my skin is too pale and I seek a shade tree or a hat until I decide I’d just rather be back inside. I enjoy the view from the window. I like seeing children at play, running, laughing and making the sorts of trouble that used to cause me stress. Adults are another matter. I see them standing or sitting, almost always talking. They never seem to be having fun. And this is where I think of my grandparents. Been two years since the last was buried. But I think and wonder if they had a second go, would they talk less and smile more?

795. dead as yesterday

ed note: this chapter takes place in the future from current events in the story--how far, I don't know

I said to Von that there comes a time when all that remains are fading memories. And in this barren landscape what roots is not the vine but rather a thicket of questions. He looked at me or maybe he was just looking in my direction, for I sensed whatever wheels were turning, they weren’t rolling my way. Then he spoke. What he said next I have forgotten. And this is the pain. You see, we buried Von yesterday. And all I can think is, he's dead. As dead as yesterday.

they said

They said he was in a new land and that the battles were different now. He’s lost weight. Smiles less honestly. Blinks more. This wager of gossip tossed back and forth, back and forth. But it is hard to know of a battle not fought or even witnessed. What of the orders lost or misunderstood? Of cordite and burning flesh in the nostrils? Eardrum bursting concussions? Or even the history between, say, the Turks and the Greeks or the Serbs and Croats? None of these things, however, slows the wagging of tongues. And one thinks of little boys and the pleasure of kicking a football, or friend, for that matter. And of other little boys standing mute before turning away in the comfort of twos and threes. The view is different from the ground with blood in your mouth and dirt under your nails.

more snow . . .

The weather had turned cold and everyone took on the weight of coats and sweaters. The landscape held less light becoming heavy with shadow. He looked at his watch. She was late. A light snow began to fall. The street a white robe with cuffed sidewalks. The edges of his table softening. His own jacket twinkling the last light of flakes silently winking out.

He ordered another cup of coffee and watched couples come and go in holiday pace, their gloved hands held. Store fronts were full of frost and sparkle. Everywhere, jewels of red and green inlaid on white. He looked at his watch again. Even the second hand seemed impatient. With a weak smile his coffee arrived. The waiter someplace else. As was she.

Children seemed as balls of wool against this cold, their rouged cheeks full of smile. School was out. Somewhere a church bell tolled and the lights on the corner turned from red to green. Cars passed, slowly, little faces peering out of fogged windows. Families, together. They all looked the same. Happy.

Still, nothing. She would wear blue. Or maybe silver. Standing out against the others. And too, she would be walking alone, her long hair bouncing on cloaked shoulders, glint eyes and a smile he needed more with each moment she did not appear. He knew in the ambient sound, he could not hear his watch ticking. What was fact and what was real, like the winter sky, seemed gray.

From inside the cafe, bread baked. He smelled it with each jingle of the small bells on the door, opened always by men. And as quickly, closing, hushing warm waves of aroma over him, muting laughter he could see. He thought of her arms, of how they laid over him, the warmth of her torso as it fit into his under their sheets. The scent of her perfume fading now with the night, still sweet. He looked again. Down the street and then to his watch. Nothing but movement. And he thought of her moving. Her lines of silver and black against starlight, so graceful, fluid where breath alone was heard, where eyes held and arms embraced against their flow. As around him families flowed. As before him sat her snow dusted chair. Empty.

She said she would come. He had the note. Worn now from reading, its creases like elephant hide. He saw joy in the loops of her pen. The blue ink seemed alive, vibrant. She had written love, the L swooping as if she were all curve, all grace and elegance, as if this note, as last night, would be the last. Down the street more families came. Arms and hands carrying bags as still it snows and still there was nothing of blue or silver, nothing coming his way, not this morning, not ever again.

the snows had come

The snows had come. Shyly, at first. Large flakes falling quietly in the morn as too the night. The countryside appeared quilted, little sugary ridges finding nooks and panes. There was a quiet to winter and one either embraced it or was driven mad depending on one’s propensity for solitude and the air not spoken. Or, in some houses, the madness was just the opposite, winter having driven folk inside and all their noise with them. Rooms grew smaller and tempers shorter.

Still, there was a warmth to kitchen and den, of stove and fire, coffee and hot chocolate. Lights became important in winter in ways they were never in summer. Lamps, candles and even Christmas lights imparted a measure of comfort against nature, the darkening sky, of endless grey. We never spoke of it in our house, the transient passage of mind and heart through this world just as we never spoke of death at funerals. I suppose this was the sadness. Not winter. Not less hours of daylight. But rather the highlighting of what was not discussed. And the feeling one got, but only later, that we lived in the shallows.

The Story of Kyra

if nothing else . . .

current word count: 277, 394

794. I'd like to believe . . .

I stood and watched from the bridge as Hyneria slipped away. Her dim light filling the observation deck as it filled our eyes. All were there, all leaden of foot and hunched of shoulder. There was shallow breathing and the quiet hum of Bravo. And one couldn’t help but think our coffin metal, these shiny walls of quarry and glass. To know the inside of one’s tomb, not with age and of purchase, but young, of within not as visit but swallowed whole, consumed alive by the infinite black soil of the universe. This is how I met the crew. Survivors bound by loss and weighed with grief.

My name is Kyra. I have passage because my grandfather was somebody, because he believed that I was too. These twin sacks I carry and the air I breathe is humid in memory of lesson and loss, of the dock and who was there and who was not. Of my family, I am the only survivor. I witnessed my sister die young in the arms of our benediction and ablution. The others, I can only pray imagination takes leave of me, of this sense of not knowing the last, not seeing the hand of peace close their eyes, a torment that knows no drowning. But I will say this, my parents died to me long before Hyneria consumed itself. I struggle to purge myself of the bitterness, the rejection they knowingly or not bestowed. And although it is not packed among our supplies, I can feel it as I feel the very leather upon my skin.

I suppose, as most, I am guided in this way, by what has occurred to me and of what is expected. I want to give what I did not have. I want a child. I want to know of warm blankets and of books read at night. But mostly, I want the tender kisses goodnight, of love exchanged in the first person, by choice, by presence. I want to look and be seen in the way of mother and child and I want to know of this giving of life beyond the giving of life. In a way, the child in me wants to be the parent. To know that in this interminable darkness, there is a light and to cup my hands around it, to protect it, to reflect in it. I would like to believe this is possible. I’d like to believe this is something.