So I wrote this a while ago and gave it a little face lift...I think it probably needs another one... but oh bother :)
...
She was not necessarily
a loner, rather, it was simply more often than not she found herself alone.
Even then it wasn’t entirely bad. She was, like everyone else, but, for
the most part, everyone else didn’t know that. In fact they didn’t always
remember her name.
With a sigh she tossed her phone onto her
bedside table. Once again a thorough search of her contacts found no one
for a night like this. She groaned. How was she even laying on her
bed? It had to be a hundred degrees in the mobile park, much less inside
one of these little tin cans still holding heat from the muggy summer day
inside.
Summer. Summer was for being young.
Summer was for living. For driving, and talking, and—many things, but not
tonight. The air was thick with sticky humidity which made moving feel
like swimming and breathing very similar to drowning.
“One,” she sighed, not quite ready she relaxed
in her bed. Now, a moment later she counted, “one, two, three,” after
which she dragging herself upwards. Standing she groped around in the
dark a minute searching. With a few bumps and clatters she pulled on her
boots.
“Where are you go—” she slammed the door. Not
tonight. Language was impossibly
difficult, “No, please.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say to the
voice from inside the van.
Before long she was running. Why was she
wearing boots? She scorned her stupidity as the new blisters started to
form. Idiot, she thought. The leaves crunched underfoot creating a
roar the moment she stepped off the asphalt of the park into the woods.
Her hair swung wildly about her face, in front of her eyes. It stuck
there, clinging to her sweaty skin. Somehow doing so always engaged
her. It was suffocating. Clawing and struggling with her hair as
she went she was propelled faster. Onward. More. She urged
her legs to continue. She couldn’t feel the blisters any more, she
couldn’t hear the leaves under foot. Then she saw, it.
The lake with all of its cool and invitation was
out stretched before her. Just a few more trees, a few more paces, she
was there. Her breath was hard and she was still suffocating under her
hair, under the air, under her own skin. She slowed, walking out
from the safety of the trees into the light of the moon.
She felt suddenly under examination, where once
she had been a wild thing, she was no longer. Now she stood in light, her
damp pink tank top, her jeans cut to shorts, and beaten boots holding throbbing
feet, the cracked nail polish, the makeup running down her face; this was
her. She stood and it pained her. She was alone to slinking eyes,
to those who could still be in the dark, but worse she was visible to the light
and her own suddenly open eyes. She was watched by the harvest
moon. It was ever so far, and near. Its yellow light was almost
like daylight, glinting off her sweaty skin. It lit the lake as a perfect
mirror, the stillness of the wind passed hardly a ripple.
She walked to the water’s edge as though she
were in church. Her shoulders removed from any poor posture and her head
held none too high. Below was also the scene above, the stars and moon
and trees over head all resided in the dark water’s reflection. She stood
a moment in awe, losing herself in the world above and forgetting below,
forgetting which one she was a part of. She was, really, somewhere in
between, the waters cool at her feet and the silent space above.
Something flashed into her sights. She leapt
back from the water’s edge falling back into the dust. Her heart was in
her stomach, and her stomach in her throat, as the happy illusion vanished from
her mind. She crawled to the edge again. The despair of her knowledge was
all that remained. Again, the flash of yellow returned. She looked
down at her own reflection. She was a pitiful thing. It was her
hair, once again, which gave her away. Her long bleach yellow waves, were
frizzy and deflating. Stray hairs poked out everywhere and stuck to her
sweaty skin, topped off with an inch of brown hair growing from the roots.
Filthy blouse, filthy skin, filthy hair—tears
rolled down her cheeks as she gazed on. Nothing could tear her from the
picture below. It was the dream, the glory all growing dim to her
image. She watched as the beauty around her blurred and her eyes filled
again with tears emptying into the pool and distorting the other-her as well.
Trash. She was lost in her misery a little longer; her shoulders shook with
emotions she choked down into silence. Silence on the water, that’s what
she had come for, and why was she ruining it? Finally she could remain
silent. She had captured her sorrows once more within herself; once more
she could take part in the silence of the night.
But the silence did not resume. Silence
was broken. Silence was filled with anguish. She looked out on the
glass of the lake to see, a boat. It was a thin sailing skiff, ironic,
seeing as there wasn’t a breath of wind within a hundred miles. At the
front of the boat perched a boy, or a man—a male. He was doubled over and
shirtless his shoulders slinking up and down to a cry which split across the
humid air. He groaned his chest releasing a burden making his well
defined ribs sag beneath his skin. His gangly arms dropped from holding
his head, stretching out to the waters below.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” his weeping had grown
softer, weaker.
She knelt at the water’s edge, watching.
Listening to the silence wrestling with the sound, of the man in the boat, was
chilling and intimate. It was to witness what she should not have seen,
but saw. This moment with the silence and the man was as though the earth
rotated from that point, perhaps that even the moon seemed to stand in witness
to the figure on the boat. Slowly the sound continued, in waves in
rhythms, it pounded. It refrained only to return with a thunder, a
violent rebuttal, was defeated only to return in rage. His cries were not
a mere escape from his lips but a song, a story he told of a soul who refused
to stand still.
After watching on for some time she felt as
though she had known him, as though she was a part of the song itself an no
longer an intruder but one of the honored guests like the trees and the water.
“Why,” she called out a moment. Her voice
cracked from its sudden us. She regretted the sound the moment she spoke,
so foreign so unwelcome in this beautiful story.
The crier cease, she regretted her actions even
more so. He sniffed, taking a deep breath with all the time in the world.
He turned his head over his shoulder to see the person who had spoken behind
him.
“Why what?” he sniffed again, his nose obviously
still effected by his tears.
She shook horrified, what had she done? What had
she wanted to ask in the first place? She stood before speaking, “why are
you crying?”
The man leapt from his seat at the tip of the
boats bow towards the center. The moon revealed him even more frail and
sunken, his rib cage heaving visibly beneath the surface. “Why do I cry,”
his eyes looked to heaven, to the moon who shone down on him. “Why do I
cry,” his voice cracked and his eyes were once again filled with tears, he
stretched his gangly arms out to the sky, “I cry” he said with his voice barely
stifling sobs below, “I cry, because, because I was once in a storm.”
He stood longer looking up at the moon his arms
grasped from behind him the boats mast and rigging. He leaned back on it
so to look even higher above his head.
“I was once in a storm,” the aguish in his voice
was overwhelming cracking with a definite snap. He turned to the mast and
pushed with all his might, running then to the other side he pushed
again. The boat remained eerily still as he now jumped from one side of
the boat to the other. With a shriek he said, “I once was in a storm but
there’s no wind now.”
He collapsed to the floor of his boat his head
buried in the crook of one arm while the other dragged in the water.
“I was once in a storm,” he yelled with all his
might, “and I once was so, so scared. Because he was a god, and I loved
him. I was trying so, so hard to get to shore. I once was a sailor,
and the seas were so high. I thought,” his sobbing resumed a moment, he
paused, “I thought I was going to die.”
“But you didn’t die,” her voice called out
across the still lake, “you’re here now, it’s calm.”
“I was so scared, and the waves were so big and
strong. My arms,” he held them out again to her, while still sitting in
the boat, “my arms were so tired and my back was so weak, and I couldn’t go any
further—and I loved him.”
“I was so scared,” said this looking straight
into her eyes, into eyes that rarely were looked into. He grew more
serious, “I thought I might even lose my boat.” He paused to let his words of
ultimate dread sink in. “I thought I would, but he was sleeping.”
He stood looking again at the moon then at her
his smile through tear stained eyes was an anguish all its own, a victory held
between his parted lips, taking all their strength to express it, “SLEEPING!
Can you imagine?” He let out a small empty laugh.
Something in his smile held her in rapture; she
spoke without thinking “in a storm?”
“Yes,” he laughed again, “he slept in that boat,
while my back broke, while my arms grew tired—when I thought we might die! He
slept. He slept so peacefully, so happily—I don’t know if he was often
happy, often he was so burdened—he was, so good to me. But when he slept,
he was, he was,” he stumbled around for words, the tears still streaming down
his face, “he was so tired, and so strong, and I wanted to get him to
shore. He was rapped tight in a blanket—we used to call him a sleeping
kitten. But I guess no one was calling him that then.”
The man sighed, his eyes were already
there. Far from the girl, and the
boat. Wherever it was, it played out
before him, retelling the old tale again and again. “He was sleeping, and
I thought for sure we would die, but someone---someone woke him up.
They woke him! And he turned from them and walked,” he stood saying this
returning to his perch, “he stood right here, where the waves rocked the most,
and he,” the man continued the reenactment, “he stretched out his arms wide—so
the whole storm could see him.” His hands fell to his sides and he turned
to the girl on shore again. “I don’t know what he said, I doubt he had to
say anything, but when he stretch out his arms,” his voice dropped to a
whisper, “silence.”
He let out a new cry, a rebuttal of all rebuttals,
a vengeance and a sorrow too deep to be haphazardly spoken in his story.
It was overwhelming him, engulfing him, he was fighting it as much as he rode
on the anguish that filled his heart.
“Peace. It was so sweet, my arms were no
longer worried, my back could rest against the boat, I could get him to shore.
But peace,” he struggled to keep his cries under breath, “but peace is so
still, and the storm was so big—I thought we were going to die—but he was,” he
looked up at the moon gazing from a slightly higher position, “YOU were
here!” He screamed falling backwards to lean against the mast.
“But you’re safe, you got the man to shore.”
“I loved him, O God I loved him.”
“But
you did your best, you got to shore!”
“It’s not the storm,” he groaned, “he was there.”
“He calmed it, I
thought you didn’t like the storm?”
“He was there when it was peaceful too.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“He is the moon, but I loved him. He was
once sleeping—He was once sleeping in my boat, and I loved him. He was
sleeping,” his grief so overwhelming he could only laugh through his tears, his
eyes returned from their far off place to the girl on shore, “he was sleeping,
in my boat. I knew him, and he loved me.”
“Who was he?” she asked. The man’s wild
eyes saw her core, it was as though he knew her too well. It was as
though she had been with him all the time he had wept, as though he knew
everything about her, and she him. And yet some unknowing was painful,
her questions just as cruel.
“He was my God,
He is my God,
and
now He is just the moon.”
