Archive for January, 2011
By Design (8)
The days here are hot. The nights hotter. A wind, never cool, blows in the faces of all present. The line up. He hooks a thoughtful claw into a stone. Easily it rebounds off the wall. Shattering. A thousand years, twenty, irrelevant. Again. A new one. Another try. The cross still haunts him. He can’t over come it. He’ll put another one up, and again, until something changes. Then, then seven years will be unequivocally his. The days are never cold.
By Design (7)
It seems appropriate that it was a knife. His parents never agreed on anything but that. it was inexorably him, they said. the rich red stained the snow. It was gone in a day. A little more than that, really. No note. He didn’t need a note. Just a faint melody resonating in the air. The wind never came to carry the sound away. his father wondered about his boy. Mother cried. The world lived. The nights went from cold to warm and back again.
By Design (6)
He screwed up. He screws up again. Their names wander across his mind. He sees it now. Who did this. Who did all of this. He talked to her. The her, at least. No, all the hers. All the hers that he didn’t imagine, at least. It’s not just them. He knows now. The moonlight is full. The window is open. There’s a rocking chair on the wall. Strong arms lift him up. The night is warm again.
By Design (5)
I’m burnt out. He writes it on the walls. I have nothing left. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. He gave up spiritually a long time ago. Nothing is right in his mind. With his mind. His father takes pen in hand. A letter. Written on a scrap. Validating, supporting, loving. A scrap. Why? There are words. Neatly typed. Frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow. In the bleak midwinter, long ago. Bleak. Appropriate. Hopeless. Empty. And he hears it again. In his mind. On the page. You will do great things. Great damage to the enemy. He sees her. In his mind. Feels the rending. The tearing. It blazes. The night is warm.
By Design (4)
The morning is frigid again. The sky full of stars, but he doesn’t see them. The acrid burn of the cold air burns his lungs. it’s not enough. The needle is sharp, in his hip. Just enough to ground himself. to force his mind back to reality. The blood stains. He wasn’t expecting that. No one notices. He wants them to notice, but they won’t. The pain is great, he tells himself. My loss, unbearable. Why did she do this to me? What happened so wrong? Then, what did I do wrong? What do I lack? The blood hardens in the cold. The night is red.
By Design (3)
Twilight is nothing in the summer. Light is immortal for a time. He kicks at the petrified plastic on the highway’s shoulder. Echoes of his father’s voice. his own voice. There’s more than one way to God! And his mother’s. Cool, and sure. A tinge of sadness. No. There isn’t. The words. A tight grip on his shirt. Gravel underneath his bare feet. He passes the church on the highway. Doesn’t even look in. The light is dying; his feet, raw. This will be the last time. Wind tugs at the shirt. The night is coming.
Take the most important thing in the world to you. Let’s pretend it’s a vase. Drop it. Step on it. Slip on it. Keep smashing it into a million tiny pieces. Cut yourself on it and bleed everywhere. When you finally roll over and see it through matted hair, what do you do? What can you do? That thing that meant more to you than anything else in the world will continue to be broken and no matter what you do you won’t be able to put it back together again because you smashed it apart in the first place.
By Design (2)
Two thirty in the night. A cold wind winds its way through gaps in the window. the boy is crying. Six months old. It’s two thirty at night because it’s the shortest day of the year. No morning to be had. Father strides in. Confident. Always in control. Or wishes he was. NO one sees those nights. He gathers his son into his arms. Prays away the demons. Slowly, the wind dies away. Hear me son. he says. You will do great things. You are going to do great damage to the Enemy. The boy sobers. The whimpers disappear like the win. He stares as he bites down on tiny fists. The night stays dark.
