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Silence
Humanity choked itself with its need to grow, simplify, and automate. The air filled with acrid rain, polluting and stinging her exposed body. She suffered in silence, withering in agony, trying to keep up with humanity’s quest to rule the planet. She tried so hard, sending out warnings, but her body quaked, sending humanity’s buildings tumbling onto her back. Still, they would not stop. Then, she retched scalding acid, it dripped down her bosom, and people fled screaming. She coughed and choked, to no avail. Gaea sucked in a long, desperate breath. With it, nature retreated into her body and disappeared. Her skin cracked, and her tears ran dry. The people moaned, sobbed and pleaded to their gods, whispering apologies and empty promises if only Gaea would return nature’s spirit. Their pleas were unanswered. Gaea was finally at peace. All that remained was her devastated carcass. Humanity fell. The prayers ended, and silence, emptiness, and nothingness replaced the cries and prayers. I must have been born with a vivid imagination and a creative nature that would ensure
reading had an overarching importance in my life. I read ‘Gone With The Wind’ for the first time when I was eleven years old, and then reread it many times thereafter. Unfortunately for my mother, I was a difficult breech birth: years later I would joke with her that the long and challenging labour was due to me reading GWTW in the womb. “I should have had the forethought to close that heavy tome as I made my way out into the real world,” I remarked to Mom when home on a visit from the city, “but I was intensely engrossed in the burning of Atlanta!” Growing up in a large family, my sisters and I had a love-hate relationship, typical of many children. I was a terrible tease with them; I was the proverbial thorn in their sides. However, for the record they teased and taunted me too; in fact, they ganged up on me on many an occasion, a middle child, and the only boy in a house full of sisters (several years later another sister and finally a brother were born but were like a second family for my parents). For example, they often insisted that I was adopted: making the best of a bad situation I imagined there had been a mistake at the hospital between Prince Andrew and myself, and my rightful and regal place was at Buckingham Palace in Jolly Olde England. As well, a favourite trick of my sisters was to try to pull the towel off me that was wrapped around my waist, when I was either on the way into the washroom to have a bath or on the way out. I was mortified that my sisters would get sight of ‘the family jewels’, in all their glory and magnificence. It is generally known to be true that boys are testy and odorous little creatures, but girls are just plain mean and spiteful when they have a bone to pick (and they don’t forget anything, better than any elephant you may have met). When at our worst, we fought like cats and dogs, enjoying every minute of our sibling-based battles; at our best, just have someone say anything untoward about any one of us, and a line was drawn in the sand, the wagons were put in a circle, and all artillery was pointing outward at the enemies. In short, may God have Mercy on those children who had decided to pick on any one of the Potter brood. As siblings, we were as thick as thieves, and sometimes did some good-natured thieving - seeing if we could steal a chocolate bar from the candy counter at the town’s most popular restaurant- coffee shop when the owner was busy at the cash register, just to prove a point. Even though that woman kept an eagle eye on us, the hand is quicker than the eye! Mother made the grass grow
Not the rain Her hands nourished Gathered Soft reaper She knew What must be kept & what must be scythed In order To survive Darkness wears this part of the world with shadow
& there is the patter of water on the tarred road outside. I pick my phone & stride through the memories in photos & then your portrait pops up at the last few slides The one where you carved your face into an image Of smiles like a sculptor & it held my gaze. Like glue to paper. It’s been a year after. The day the flower sprouting In the soil of our hearts died. & I died with it too. You had asked us to see. The meet morphed into the aftermath of a knife through meat— caressing The thread that held us with a blade. Found my voice under waves of death
Decaying, the chorus thinned to an anthem only mother's bear Everything licks out, Cries became murmurs of what filled lands green Fleshy screams Bloody whimpers Fields sugared in Sunday gospel Hear their cries their lord Open up your ears deaf lord South Jamaica, Mine and my mother’s and my mother’s mother’s grave, Barren land stretch for miles Full of symbols of decay and love, Water browned where they’ve washed their hands And tried their hands at purity Absolute. Absalom. Back then we were savages
back then we worshipped the moon as it was constant in its inconsistencies of shape and wordless in complaint of inadequacy. Winters were untameable so we rode glaciers to new lands preserved below fresh islands birthed hot and steaming from fire cooled sea. They say all angels have soft skin
And wings made of white They say they tread lightly And spin gold through the mere sound of their voice But they don’t tell you About the tearing of the flesh when the wings come How you never know how dark blood really is until it is all over your hands They wanted me to be soft, to be vulnerable But look how much that has taken from me Her mind too escaped to the green fields.
When the sun tingled her delicate skin, And her Ma’s clay-burned hands Were the only things that could heal. She remembered the cold winds of Spring– Sharp and essential. Like her Ma’s stern face, Or her Baba’s hands of metal. She dreamed of magic carpets and glossy mangoes, No more slippery stairs or crowded windows. But as she bundled her whole life in bandages, And felt the wet dirt Beneath her feet, Maybe the soiled boxes weren’t the Only damaged packages. Risen from a blood-stained sea, a maiden broke through the foam-coated waves.
She took her first breath. Pain sliced through her body as air filled her lungs, and she released a cry that shook the very heavens. Like a child unleashed from its mother's womb. Violent and desperate. Saltwater flooded her mouth, silencing her. Choking, she fought the waves that began to drag her from her birthplace. The force of the currents weakened her resistance to the point where fighting was useless. The waves, no longer daunting, lulled her into a sublime stillness, cradling her until she washed up on pearly shores. Time passed slowly as she laid there. Unmoving, like a fish stuck on the scorching sands that turned her frail skin pink and blistered. Eventually, she took her second breath. She tasted the salty waters on her tongue, and something stale, and coppery. Strands of her golden hair, infused with fire from the burning sun, clung to her flushed face. A deep nothingness echoed in her mind for each breath she took, dark and forlorn, until golden heat began to surge through her veins—divine ichor pulsating within her marbled heart. Did you know Persephone plucked
those damn pomegranate seeds- all on her own. Poor girl so desperate for some sweet, scouring nails into arteries for teeny red gems. |
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