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There
were trees, which slowly stood humming in the background of my
whitened-glass mind, staring with the breathless murmuring cloudiness
that hovered faintly and softly in those interstitial spaces [gaps left
by leaves in different shades and transitions: of doubt, jealousy, the
moment between awake and asleep, green, separation, the recollection of
light, sadness]. Perhaps you would like to walk with me under the
hanging firmament, rain from before the Flood dripping down from trees
like tears into your arms, enfolded in themselves like a wave flowing
over softened, dull rocks covering the seashore. In each of these
moments (no longer present but for our own memories), there exist
fragments of you that, if remembered one by one from beginning to end,
might allow for the whole to return [snow that melts into the air and
reappears in the mountains, a young boy reaching his hand out to catch
you], for the minutes to reverse order, and for
… We
were there, with the trees’ branches floating down towards our lifted
lips in the manner of feathers. Carrying the scent of running water
from surrounding hills, the air (having been decanted and poured,
tasted), retrieved from within us a profound silence: when a bird, as
it rests, would glance at you and all the world pauses for that
wordless knowing. The empty minutes your face transformed into a smile
are when I realized how I understand you: deep roots that nourish the
high branches. (You must know, now, that I couldn’t bear whispering in
that majestic living cabinetry – that oak dresser, that loose drawer of
mahogany – where life springs up silently, and silently it decays.)
Your smile took me with it, into the hands at our side. Into the veins,
the resin, the leaves.
… Where
were we when I last saw your face? Perhaps you would like to hear what
I said to you, when you could not hear these words: “there were trees
staring with the breathless murmuring cloudiness that hovered faintly
and softly in…” They forget me. Those subdued, earthy colors that could
think only of melting, of floating down. They forget the thoughts that
carry me [quiet glaciers slowly rolling past, supported by the smallest
of pebbles, each particle smooth, housed in shadows and ice]. The
leaves above us now are drifting gently down, coiling around sprouting
trunks of their own imagining, hoping.
… An
ocean whose fish shimmer, flowing over shoals through murkiness,
casting light wherever they turn: you are this, under these trees, and
the leaves [understanding the meaning of flight and of death, of which
you dream at night] that will never cease to drench us in their descent
to brush eyelashes and shins, arms that would collect dust. I looked at
you, silently [the moment when breath dissolves], and you were there by
me.
… Those
drops of water were fragments of your memory. Assembling themselves in
patches of wet hair, in the folds of my ears, in my eyes [a lake at
night, waves sliding over wet sand so smoothly, so quietly], I saw you
standing there, with arms hanging at our side.
… A leaf floated past my fingers, rested. You were not here [it was not your hand I felt]. |