The night after you died, I found every gift you had ever given me broken in the front hall. I don’t remember coming home. I remember the sheriff’s department. I remember the pitying eyes of Roger Greenfield. I remember the look of your body, whole and pure despite what had been done to your face. I remember the vibrant yellow of the sun tattoo on your thigh. I remember crying. And then I was home, struggling with the door. It fought me. Its weight heavy against my shoulder pushing me away.
Were you pushing me away? Or were you right? Maybe I’m just that weak.
I fell into the old apartment. Almost blacken my eye with the doorknob on my way in. Daria’s green eyes greeted me from the dark floor. She was silent for once, which I took for granted in the moment. I was not in the mood hungry yowling, even if I was 5 hours late to dinner. I said hello and she turn her head, pointing down the hall with her grey muzzle.
On time, my therapist asked me what hurt most about that day. At that moment, stumbling into a dark apartment, red eyed and drunk on sorrow, I felt pain. But it didn’t feel real. The reality of it didn’t hit until I turned on the hall light. The hall was covered in the smashed remains of paintings, torn drawings, shredded scarves and dresses. Presents you had given me for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and just because you could, that laid out before me were destroyed with a violence I could not understand. In it, I saw the red pulp of your face: crushed, torn, burned.
Overwhelmed by the look of it, I turned to the kitchen. Put my hopes in the curative powers of a cold glass of water. I was dreaming. It was all a dream. But it was too hot to be a dream. Centered in the kitchen, flanked by reclaimed wooden countertops and yellow wallpaper, sat the gas stove. A fire went about its business under a cast iron pot.
The air was thick, dry, and impossibly hot. I looked down into the bubbling pot. I never would have guessed that burning silver didn’t have a smell. Or that, despite the impossible heat radiating from the stove, it still wasn’t hot enough to break down yellow tourmaline. It was then, I told my therapist, that I experienced an emotional death. In watching the ring, a symbol of your love and the sunshine you brought into my life, boil and bubble on our stove, something in me was lost. Corrupted. Broken.
Whatever wanted you to suffer in life also wanted the life you left behind to suffer, too.
When I woke up, the only thing my mind was prepared to think was, “This wasn’t my grave.”
Well, it was technically my grave since I so happened to be within it, but it wasn’t my grave. It wasn’t meant for me. The dirt and worms around me were told to expect someone else, and now, confronted with the corpse of another, are retaliating. I’ve never heard earth so noisy before. It shifted and ground against the coffin as if I was buried on a fault line.
The coffin around me fell to pieces. Dirt pushed its way in from all sides and made a solid effort to get to know every inch of me, the trespasser. I knew that insects would be crawling all over me. I expected stings, bites, or at least the frightful teasing of bug legs on human skin, but I felt nothing but the pressure of gravity. The living didn’t seem willing to dine on me.
I closed my eyes. The dark within is the same as the dark without, but there was a comfort behind my eyes I wanted to hold on to.
When I opened them, I saw black clouds. Irritated by my presence, the earth split itself open, pulling itself away so it didn’t have to touch me. The silence promptly issued me my eviction notice.
I sat up with great difficulty. My mind may have been clear, but my body didn’t want to go anywhere. Every bone and muscle fought against me as I willed myself to move. Rigor mortis held me upright while I thought to myself. About what, I can’t remember. Like my dreams, they flew off while I wasn’t paying attention.
The ground shifted beneath me. I assumed it to be a threat of some sort, and stood up immediately after it subsided.
The feeling of nothingness that surrounded me was distracting. A light frost made the grass glisten, and a thick fog revealed the hidden beams of light from every streetlamp.
“A cold, clammy night,” my eyes told my brain, “Shiver, shiver.”
The regal power of an aged face holds quite a bit is disdain in between folds of skin. And that intense dislike never wanes, even after meeting a murderer of one’s husband for two years.
Across the cafe table sat a woman waging war with her eyes. She ordered tea (“Earl Grey with milk and lemon, please.”) without looking at our waiter, who was, at this point, used to being treated that way by her. When it arrived, she looked at me over the rim of her cup as she sipped it. If looks could build defensive walls, her’s were tall and (mostly) impregnable.
“So,” she planted the empty tea cup on the table with a steady hand, “What have you been up to this week?”
Her voice held the confidence of a well trained actress. The first time she confronted me, she veiled her face with mourning clothes and did not speak for fear of her own shaking voice. Practice pulled her together enough that we could talk to each other over breakfast like adults.
“I got a request.”
“Is that odd?” Our waiter, Jim, cleared away her cup and saucer, but she did not look at him. It was as if she believed the moment she blinked would be the moment I disappeared forever. But I won’t. I have no reason to. The “dirt” she has on me is nothing special. If I ever needed to, I have people who could dispose of the photographs she took. At lot of people owe me favors.
The best silences are the kind you can fall into. They are thick and dark, like a black velvet cloth, and free flowing, like syrup on an overturned plate. They take space and submerge it in pure quiet. When you find yourself within one, not even your ears ring. Your heart goes quiet. So does your breath. Your mind. They haunt from place to place like ghosts, so they can be hard to find unless you welcome them in. But they were my only refuge as a child.
You listen to the crows knowing that they are talking about you. Straining to hear every syllable, you sit stiffly, eyes bulging a bit from the stress. Crow-speak is regional. Even among crow families in the same mile-wide wood, the syntax and vocabulary varies considerably. Every time you listen it's like solving a cryptogram in your head, but doing so has gotten much easier over time. Some words are shared by most dialects, like "human" and “murder."
My favorite thing about clocks is how desperately they want you to believe them. The clock face is designed to look trustworthy. Gilded numbers, painted depictions of spring, and crisp white-ness of porcelain give the first impression very businessman wishes to impose upon a client: "I am not here to rob you."
I once wrote a poem proclaiming my want to be a Lavender Woman. In its final stanza I admitted that I cannot be a Lavender Woman, and that is true, although not for the reasons I list in my poem.
The Lavender Woman is not something I want to become, it is something I want for myself. A character. A presence. Something ethereal that lives in my home. Something that loved me once, in a past life, and loves me still in death.
It’s an unrealistic expectation of anyone, certainly, so I doubt that this is a person (or a spirit) that I am seeking. I think, to me, the Lavender Woman is the love I want. A love that hangs about me like the smell of flowers. A love that has a presence in my life even when I am alone.
If you are truly my dearest (and I would like to think that you are, at least for a time), then you are the embodiment of the Lavender Woman. If that makes any sense at all.
I was out today. Where doesn’t really matter. I was just… out. Somewhere. Walking and walking and walking, glass bottle in one hand, phone in the other. I was shaking the bottle vigorously, hearing the water collide with itself. I think it’s a nervous habit. Something to keep my focused on what I am seeing and hearing and doing, not the day dreams behind my eyes or the pain on the back of my left foot. I had walked laps around the area so many times I couldn’t count them for you, but I did know that it was time to go back. My thighs burnt like small fires; a comfortable pain, but pain nonetheless. It was probably time for bed.
I didn’t realize how fast and forceful I had been walking until I got up the stairs to the door and burst through it with such a ferocity that I frightened myself and probably the neighbors with the sound of it all.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, SLAM, C R A S H!
For a moment I forgot I was the one who made the racket and stood frozen in the doorway for a good minute, waiting. Even after I remembered, I stood on the cusp of the threshold surrounded by thick silence. It was heavy and talkative in its blatant nothingness. I had walk in on something I shouldn’t have. Caught someone. or something, red handed. In the act of doing something they knew they shouldn’t be.
House and I collectively held our breath, waiting for an excuse. “This isn’t what it looks like!” or something along those lines. But nothing came. Nothing parted the silence. The lights were off. The hall was dark. And the air was still in chatty silence. I touched my knife through my coat pocket to remind myself that it was still there, then I took one tentative step into the hall. Then a second. And a third.
Cautious footfalls and old wooden planks eventually carried me to the staircase. I caressed the banister with my forefinger as I traveled around the polished sphere to the edge of the first step.
I though to call out a name; ask if they were home. But my mouth had no names to speak, so when I opened my mouth breath is all that came out. I waited there, partially embarrassed, listening. Again, there is nothing. The house is still holding its breath, so even the stairs beneath my feet make no noise when I go up to the second floor.
It was clear that something had happened. All the doors were open. Every single one of them. Even the bathroom cabinets and draws were open, or at least slightly ajar. The atmosphere was light, as if I stood on the peak of a mountain instead of the carpeted floor of my home. I walked forward slowly, gently dragging my fingers along the wall to keep me from floating away.
In front of my bedroom door, folded neatly as a near perfect square, laid a blanket, one that I did not recognize as my own. The cloth was warm, straight out of the dryer warm, and it smelled like lavender, book dust, and… someone. It was as if someone had held it close to their chest while they slept. I felt it with my hands and my lips. It was a gift.
My eyes hurt. My head hurt. My feet, my tongue, my… everything ached. I was so tired my entire world shifted a bit to the left. I put my back to the wall to keep myself from falling. My grip loosened on the blanket and my consciousness. I closed my eyes and felt arms around me, soft skin. I was lifted off the floor, but I was not afraid.
I woke up in my bed, lovingly tucked in and warm.
Whatever’s in the hall sounds breathier than usual. On a normal day I can occasionally hear even, quiet breathing if I linger in the stairwell for too long. But something has clearly stirred it up a bit. I can hear it clearly over the sounds of my typing.
For the past few months, I’ve taken to leaving my bedroom door open. Much like a cat that can never decide whether it wants in or out, *it* throws a monstrous fit if doors stay closed for longer than it likes. So here we are, door wide open and breathing so loud I would think it right inside my ear, nestled in my ear bones like the stifled weeping of a next door neighbor through too thing walls.
A helicopter flies over head and disrupts the scene. There is a pause. My backpack shifts its weight and falls off the bed, heightening the silence. And again, a pause. I feel embarrassed, like I’ve been caught eavesdropping on something deeply personal.
The door knob shifts. Not a turn or a jiggle, but a gentle press downward as a hand rests upon it. The wind from the open window behind me kisses my ear and the door is gently pulled shut.
before this semester began, a bought bunch of books from thriftbooks and they accidentally mailed me three Steven King novels I didn’t ask for.
I had no idea what to do with them, but then I decided to make Full Dark, No Stars into a books of shit blackout poetry. This is page one.
pardon the shitty photo quality
dry storeroom number 1
is a place i went
and never returned to
and a space i am
and can never leave
i thought the dust would be a problem, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. i think someone turned on the ventilation and air is finally circulating through the collections. that isn’t to say the air is fresh. it isn’t. what gets pumped out of the vent carries as much dirt and dead skin as the still air i grew accustomed to during my i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here i don’t know how long i have been here stay here. but it is distinctly different. the texture is more grainy and it smells more rotten. i think it might be older air than the air in the collection. i wonder where it comes from.
the fact i even found the vent is a miracle. the collection seems to go on forever. at least that means i have something to do. everything seems disorganized. it is clear that at some point everything was order by year it was collected and then alphabetized but now everything is strewn about what was i supposed to be doing like someone was looking for something what was i supposed to be doing what was i supposed to be doing what was i supposed to be doing what was i supposed to be doing what was i supposed to be doing what was i supposed to be doing so i’ve taken to organizing it myself since i seem to have eternity to go through it all.
All was silent, as it should be. Not a word, not a sound should pass through the gates of our mouths in this holy time before the dawn. Even the rustling of cloth is forbidden. To disturb the air during these times is an offense punishable by eternal shame, for silence heralds the coming of sound. It must come before the beginning and at the end, so we try to be as quiet as possible while the sun wakes and sleeps.
My eyes are closed but I do not sleep, even though I so badly wish for it to come. I sit with my mother on the ceremonial rug my father wove for us. She is just as nervous as I am, wordlessly kneading my hands to keep us both relaxed and awake, but we are skirting the edges of deep sleep. Both of us have been awake since the sun set, performing Feray’s dance and then retiring to the camp to contemplate ourselves and the connection we share as child and Bena. Just as I begin to doze, I hear that the creeping footsteps of the Child of Feray draw near. The fear of getting caught overruns me. My senses heighten, and I focus on my mother's hands massaging my own to soothe me. It walks past me and I stifle my sigh of relief. Then my mind wonders once more…
The moon is full on my bare skin. I welcome its purifying stare into my heart; may my fate be blessed by Feray the White. As the creature dims and ducks below the mountains, I hear the distant chirping of birds. Although I cannot see him, I know that my father stirs from sleep in the citadel that sits in the middle of the Valley’s Eye. My mother stops rubbing my hands and I open my eyes for the first time since the sun faded to purple. I look into her tired eyes and she looks into mine. Silently, we wait.
It takes five minutes for the sun to rise above the mountains completely and they are truly a peaceful five minutes. The silence of the night broke to the song of birds and the shining reds of Osha. I quietly think a prayer to myself, giving thanks to him for his protection and guidance during my young life.
The peace of five minutes does not last long. A soon as it is risen, we must begin our journey to the center of the eye. The Child of Feray calls for us to stand and we obey. My mother walks me from the camp to the cusp of the valley. I stand next to the others with the sun to my back. My mother stands directly across from me. Our faces reflect nothing, but we know that this is a proud moment for us both.
The Child of Feray stands to the south of us, facing the northern rim. It surveys us one final time, looking for impurities stained white on our skin from Feray’s eye. I count my breaths. In: one, two. Out: one, two. I know I have done nothing wrong but I fear it all the same. Feray the White is vengeful. Two minutes pass. Twenty-four breaths enter my lungs. Then the Child of Feray finally begins singing. And so it begins.
Aelish goes first. To the rhythm of the singing, he forfeits his old name to his father, his Bena. His father relieves him of it, then steps to the southern side of Aelish and give him his final Benak command: Run.
He takes off running, newly nameless, across the valley. Anxious energy runs rampant through my body as those next to me one by one begin their run. I close my eyes and pray again to the god I am about to break away from. I give up my old name to my mother. I know she will take good care of it.
My father told me that the first mile is always the worst part of the run. “No matter how hard to train,” he said, “your legs will burn like hell.” I smile, thinking about how my mother smacked his arm for using such “foul language” around a child, but it does not last very long. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My lungs hurt. I, like the sun, chase the horizon. The heat I feel in my legs, my lungs, my skin is the pain of tearing away from something old. This is the time of starting anew. I must not stop. I must see it through to the end.
All of us make it to the citadel by high noon, which is rare. Historically, there is usually one or two that Osha would not let go of. I look up and greet the sky with parched lips. My father, who was once so far away and is now so close, gives me my new name. I take it from him gratefully and utter a prayer of thanks to Yoldu. He douses me with cold water and laughs. It is a shock to the system, to suddenly be so cold. I look into my father’s eyes, the seriousness of it all seems to have washed away. We both burst into cackles. I am remade. I am renamed. I am to become a weaver now.
Sunrise to Sunset: A Life Cycle
The Doormurak mountain range is a unique place. It is kind of like a very large, rocky, eye-shaped fish bowl. If it were rain hard enough, I would suspect that the lake would overflow its banks and turn the valley into a small sea, but that is merely conjecture. According to archeologists, humans have been active in the area since the Ice Age and it is theorized that those humans remain today. The Urenan (oo-REN-ahn) are an old people with oral, and some written, history that is said to trace the lives of people in the Doormurak to at least the time of Christ.
Such talk made me curious. Since the Urenan mostly keep to themselves, it is not entirely clear who made this claim, and whether or not it was founded in the romanticization of tribal communities. So, in the winter of 2008, I decided to satisfy my inching curiosity. I traveled to the Doormurak to write down the oral history of the Urenan while doing bit of participant observation on the side. The community welcomed me graciously and seemed to enjoy our conversations about their histories and traditions, but I came across a very confusing issue. Miss Melany, who is now a close friend, was telling me the story of a weaver who was beloved by the community. She started with his birth and slowly worked her way through his first fifteen years, recounting his first laugh, his first steps, all of his achievements, great or small.
But after the age of fifteen, it seemed like she started talking about another person entirely. This was not the first time it happened. She would suddenly go on tangents about individuals that I assumed to be different people because their names were different. Usually, I let it slide. Oral history is not an easy thing to maintain, so I thought the information she did not tell me was deemed irrelevant and not worth writing down. But this time I decided to speak up. “What happened to the weaver?” I asked her and she looked at me with confusion.
“What do you mean? This is the weaver of which we speak. He is the same boy as he was when he was born. This is his second self.” This instigated I conversation I never expected.
The Urenan believe in a deity they refer to as the Whole, a being of many forms that manifests itself as the sun and moon. As a result, their rituals are all based on the phases of the moon and the height of the sun in the sky. The Whole is watchful and protective, each part specializing in a particular group. At sunrise they honor the coming of Osha the Red, who protects new life and beginnings. At high noon they honor Yoldu the Golden, who guards the prosperity of adults during their fertile years. At dusk they honor Vesna the Violet, who presides over the souls of the dead and guides the aging to their Great Sleep. Each phase of the sun, each part of the Whole, represents a stage in the life of a human being. When a member of the Urenan community is on the cusp of the next stage, the community holds a naming ceremony where the individual is cut loose from the previous stage and welcomed into the next through purification rites, tests of will, and a new name.
In total, there are three naming ceremonies, one for each part of the Whole. The first occurs after the birth of a child. As soon as the infant is born, it is brought before the counsel of elders. The elders examine it for health defects and possible messages from the god Osha. When the infant passes their inspection, the elders turn their gaze to the parents. In that moment, which parent is to the Bena is decided.
Urenan children have two parents, some biological, some not. Both live together and raise the child, but only one gets true power and responsibility over the child during the first two stages of the child’s life. The Bena is the first parent. This person is considered a human manifestation of Osha, since it is their responsibility to protect and teach the child the knowledge of the people (the language, the culture, how to survive, etc). The Shik is the second parent. They teach a specific trade to the child and represent Yoldu. This method of teaching is used to keep the community balanced. Everyone knows how to deal with everyday tasks while also specializing in advanced work, like weaving and oral history.
During the first naming ceremony, it is the Bena who names the child on behalf of Osha and dedicate the child to the god. During the second ceremony, the one that triggered my conversation with Miss Melany, the name the Bena gave is returned to them and then the Skid gives the child their adult name. This second ceremony lasts two days, but requires over a month of preparation. It occurs during the summer of a child’s fifteenth year and signifies their transition from childhood to adulthood. On the first day, there is a celebration of childhood. All initiators and their Benas exchange praises for one another before an audience, which tends to consist of the entire community. They dance and sing to each other of the memories they love and hate, which can be saddening or genuinely comical, depending on the memory. They feast, sing, and dance until the sun begins to set. To the Urenan, silence proceeds and succeeds creation, therefore silence must be observed during the transition periods between night and day to show respect to the waking and sleeping sun.
Then they perform their first test of will. While others sleep, the Benas and the initiands perform Feray’s Dance under the watchful eye of the Child of Feray, a shaman. In Urenan mythology, Feray the White is a powerful creature that formed in the mind of the Whole and split it into parts. The Bena and initiands appeal to Feray to loosen the bonds they have with their roles of child and Bena, and Osha through the dance, which lasts for eight hours. If they do this correctly, the Child of Feray allows them to rest, but they cannot sleep. Their waking mind my be subjected to the judgement of Feray. The Bena massage the hands and feet of the intitands. The practice helps soothe the initiated’s body in preparation for the next phase of the rite, but it also helps keep them both awake through the night.
If the initiands are not caught sleeping by the Child of Feray, their second day of the ceremony begins at dawn. After silence is observed, the Bena and initiands gather on the eastern rim of Doormurak. The Bena face east. The initiands face west. It is here that the old names of the initiands are given back to the ones who named them. Then , one by one, they begin their run across the valley. The goal of the run is to make it to the citadel, a tall spire towards the center of the valley, by high noon. Through the course of their run, the initiands follow the path of the sun from sunrise to high noon, imitating the transformation of Osha into Yoldu by fleeing their past names. Those that make it to the citadel despite their exhaustion are welcomed by their Shiks and renamed as the charges of Yoldu.
The beginnings of a short story that I wrote in German for class.
Längst, aber nicht in die ferne Vergangenheit, gad es eine Hexe. Irgendwo im Nord mit große Wälder und großere Bestien wohnte sie mit ihren Katzen und Hunden in einem komischen Haus mit einem wunderlichen Garten.
Es sah wie eine normale Hütte aus Holz aus, aber zu die Leute, die das Haus besuchten, war es anders. Manchmal, hätten sie Atmung in der Wände und knarrend Gespräche in der Nacht gehört. Und manchmal, hätten sie lange Flure, die vorher nicht dagewesen waren. Sie hatten große Fenster am Ende. Licht leuchtete durch das Glas und die Gesichter der Tiere spähten mit toten Augen hinein. Aber diese sind nur Gerüchte. Mann kann nicht Gerüchte vertrauen. Stimmt’s?
Ihre Tiere und Garten waren bei ihr sehr wichtig. Sie hatte fünf Katzen im Haus: Kaiserin, Moota (war wie dick als ein Kuh), Mutterkatze und Der Richter und sein Bruder Valerie. Die letzten drei liefen umher wie es ihnen passte. Oft waren sie wochenlang weg und überlebten alleine. Kaiserin und Moota dagegen waren verwöhnt und brauchten jederzeit Aufmerksamkeit oder Essen jeweils. Die Hexe hatte nichts dagegen. Sie liebte sie sowieso.
