January 5, 2018“Look at me. Don’t look away…there…see this…in my eyes…do you recognize it?”
”I don’t—please just let me go, I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re doing this. Will you please just let me go, please? I swear to you on everything I hold sacred, I won’t tell anyone. I promise!” She blubbered through mucus and trailing tears. Her red hair clung to her sweaty face and to the corner of her quivering soft-pink lips.
”You have seen me in the waves of a wandering Wednesday evening, in between the swaying leaves while birds sung a sullen song, as rays from the sun caressed your scarlet crown as you walked gracefully on by. The tree’s limbs bent painfully to touch you, and you unknowingly threw off the obeisance with a shrug.”
”Will you please explain to me what I did to you,” she whispered as her head hung heavy, “and I promise I can…I can…fix it.” Her arms pulled up with dirty rope, her white freckled fingers crossed each other in a thorny nest. The pastel-yellow summer dress her grandmother had given her was now torn and soiled and draped about her like a giant autumn leaf.
“I want you to do exactly what you’re doing now. It pleases me to watch you surrender as your bare, pale feet cannot sustain you any longer,” he said focusing his gaze on her slender ankles and seeing his mother’s face on a small birthmark ,he smiled warmly.
”I don’t understand why I am here. What is this place?”
”An abondoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. Nobody travels out this far. Not a single person can hear you howl in that dress…no one cares about your better angles…or see your stylish eyebrows…,” he uttered in a thick, soft baritone as he slipped one hand into a latex glove and then the other, “and I can proudly tell you, this moment will not be photographed.”
A horse neighed on in the distance as its hooves delved in the dusty nightmare…and the wind whined and cut through the crops…cicadas suddenly symphonied…an owl hooted then painfully screeched…in the midst of the swelling cacophonous pandemonium, she finally constructed a world within that musical composition where a spinning sun caressed her hair…where hulking trees waved their arms and reached to cover her…where Wednesday lasted forever, and the birds sang beautifully.
She had to.
∞
