Monday, March 17, 2014

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Erich

He is sleeping. He is sleeping in a room. He is sleeping in a nascent, idealized memory-of-a-room, an idea-of-things. Clapboard, windowglazing. Sun washing through trim lace curtains. The threadbare quilt beneath his –

Erich wakes. He wakes, in his own bed. He wakes in his own home. He wakes.

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Melantha

Someone is dead,

and even the trees know it.

The trees have a dark and marching confederacy and she stands at the edge of the woods. There is a road, there is always a road, it both rises and falls from where she stands, but what she knows is the wood and the verge and the bracken. Something –

How she rises from the dream, inhaling, long and deep. Expecting the metallic tang of snow on her tongue.

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Thomas

The line is five deep and does not seem to move. There’s some disturbance up ahead; a dispute over the pricing of Snickers and Mug Root Beer that escalates with the slow inevitability of an avalanche and he should be irritated because Jesus fuck these things are not that complicated and all he’s here for is a box of kitchen matches except there is a sort of bubble, see, around him. The murmur of stranger’s conversations all around him muted, dampened, drawn down and out and when he looks up and catches a glimpse of his reflection in the shining slide of the cooler doors –

- he has no idea what, or whom, he sees.

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Keisha

It takes forever to wash the paint off her hands. It is red; it is crimson. It makes her hands look rather like they were gloved in blood. The water runs; her reflection skewed in the faucet and the mirror is cloudy, covered with steam. The water runs; sluices through the viscous –

is it paint? Is it?

Sluices through the red clings. She turns up the heat until it is scalding. Picks up a pumice stone, scrubs until her hands are raw. Scrubs: thoughtlessly, and furiously, until her hands are raw.

There is still red paint beneath her nails.

wake

And, c'est tout!

wake

Monday, March 17, 2014

Tamsin

Why does that still clear lake remind her of the sea. Why does she stand on the scree at its edge with the wind scouring down from the heights, raw and bitter in the – failing light? Dawning light? – in the slanting light that consents to touch only the edges of this dark valley. Why does she long for it. Why does that longing –

ache

in her throat. The sound of –

She comes to consciousness like a blind man comes to light. Wakes, in her own bed. In her own body. In her own place. Wakes.