The next morning seemed a dream. Everything white. Linens. Snow. Young men drained of life. Somewhere, a low rumble, the stomach of war hungry. The hospital like a kitchen, doctors and nurses cleaning plates. Washing pans. Evidence vivid in cry and rip, of lip and cloth, of skin and bone, all not as they were, not as they should, consumed, tossed, expelled. And life became an accounting, a series of numbers, stats, charts. Until around 10am. He is calling your name. Do you know him she said. And I felt like a pear. Everything in my gut. Do you know him she repeated, grabbing my arms.I ran. Into the snow. Into his eyes. Kneeling before his alter of green wool. And the largest white flakes fell. I remember how beautiful his hair looked powdered with snow, frosted like christmas. And his face held a stillness, like a child or a mannequin; his eyes as lakes unplumbed. And I remember thinking if the snow would hurt his eyes, those soft flakes falling, melting into his unblinking eyes. Heaven's pillow he called it, the snow. And I thought of him now, looking so peaceful, as if he were ten years younger and I were tucking him into bed. Sheets white as snow, which is why the only sheets I own, the only sheets I'll sleep on, are white, as snow.
10 comments:
When you see life as fragile as that, don't you just want to make every second count?
Catch a tear, a smile, a moment.. just make it count.
~Silver
You do Silver. Absolutely.
Dare I say it, but you have elevated this art form, into newly born and most glorious heights...
Outstanding...
S., your kindness shall be remembered and repaid surely as the sun repays the flowers with rain. Open your arms, lift your head, part your lips. I've been saving a good rain. :-)
Oh the sweet temptation of you...
:D
muscles flowing like chocolate, fluid, liquid, an aromatic aphrodisiac, soft on the heated tongue; ablate me in ablutions, wear me upon pouty lips, glistening in my dissolve . . .
I'm liking that fractal :)
Thanks Deb. :-)
Your eloquence is unprecedented. You know some of the writers whose work I have poured over, many recent those which you yourself have recommended to me for the reason that their words touched and impressed and comfounded with their command and loveliness, so you know some of to whom I compare. Many times in my lifetime I have read something and known in that moment, I had read, seen, known, understood and felt something from which I would never recover, that I had been taken to the heavens, to a plain far and above anything that could be held onto, an ultimate high. I've read sentences, a poem, a passage particularly insightful, particularly beautiful, I've admired expression, delivery, passion, wit, approach, technique, tone, persuasiveness, rhyme and rhythm, but, and I am stressing something said before I know, off all the writing that it has been my great fortune and consummate pleasure to savour, the one that I remember, revisit, breathe anew each day is yours. The language, the intonation of the words above, drained - stomach - cry/rip/lip/cloth - consumed/tossed/expelled - accounting - pear - into his eyes - alter - frosted - held -thinking - pillow - looking, see, all, it all, every word, every combination, every conveyance, every extraction of thought, of feeling demanded, you are a star, shimmering, brilliant, transcendent.
I have loved, entirely, every piece of this series.
Sweetest, I've been reading Hemingway because I have not before and I suppose every educated person should have read something of his work. All I know is this. No one will ever accuse me of copying Hemingway. :-D
I think life flows and I enjoy literature that seems to move like a dancer, like a solo oboe carrying a single note, that mimics the way I see life. Trying to take the boxcars of language, words, and connect them into the river of a train, such that one sees a whole and not a collection of parts has always been the challenge, my goal and sometimes I succeed a little more and other times, well, nothing but a train wreck of a sentence or paragraph or post. I like this post very much. Probably my favorite since the original 1944. Your comment is one for my wall. I think I'll read it again. And then again after that.
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