Where Fools Once Stooped

Stone, I waited on the couch,

Listening with every fiber of my being.

Unmoved, I squeezed tight my breath,

Hoping to hear words which weren’t there.

                                But the words that were there

                Cavorted around me

Conjuring a haze of muggy cutting surrealism

My knuckles turned white as death

As I abused the already-fraying edges of a throw pillow.

My sister’s voice resonated on the far-away side of the phone.

“I’ll go.”

The haze lumped in my throat.

I went.

Stone-faced, I stooped only inches from the ground.

Heart unmoved, I suffocated the slightest breath of emotion.

Selfless and selfish

I wept a dry goodbye

And sprayed bleach on the blood-stained grass.

Each squeeze of the insolent trigger

Broke the night’s dead silence.

We spoke few words,

Merely pointed.

We let the night,

                The bleach,

Speak for us.

I hunkered low,

Scouring for her life in the grass.

I traced the ground like a fool

Squeezing the trigger

Breaking the silence

Breaking the night

Breaking the death

No.

Death was not broken.

Death lived.

Death lived in April while Life died.

Her life mixed with the red clay.

A vicious progression of red and red,

One evil, the other simply wandering.

No way to determine the evil from the misguided

So all are lost, but never forgotten.

I stooped closer as artificial light faded too.

Cruel Earth.

Taking her then hiding her.

Life. Light.

What else is there to give?

As I stooped

The cruel earth breathed a cruel sister wind.

My nose my mouth filled with

Metal

Salt

Bitterness

Life.

The wind breathed the taste of her life into me.

I spit.

I’ll never forget the taste.

The taste of life.

Again, the fool,

I trace the memories.

I trace memories left in the ground.

Memories now left in the darkness.

I shine the fading beam on

The shadows of life.

I breathe a heady haze of

A once-dear friendship.

I wash away the memories from

What is now a lifetime ago.

Wash it away.

Thicker than water

But still washes away.