wild strawberries of the tiger cliffs

e.l || 24 || short fiction and daydreams

[jordanbolton]

To The Person In The Newspaper - Jordan Bolton

[becomingvecna]

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

[ernmark]

Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)

The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)

The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)

We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

[veryluckyclovers]

[elprosa-elpoesa]

may 5, 2020

the tamarind is no peach, not a venerated tree, with thick roots ending where the murk begins, and where pods should hang limply is a barren twig or branch, bearing no delicious fruit. yet your gnarled, dying crown in itself is peace, where tiny sparrows rest their little feet, and birdsong is the wisdom housed in your umber bark, where mosses flourish to again wait for the dew of another day, for rain that washes sorrow, the first downpour of May.

[elprosa-elpoesa]

weather.

remember how i used to tell you that i had these spells of rain—fragments of melancholy dripping without much of a welcome, and in seconds turning into a monumental storm? then i would be silent for sometime—watching people, counting cars—until i feel better and i return to you.

i remember how the panic that associated itself with the sudden loss of words worked its way towards your fingers and you resign to solitude, finding solace in the chord progressions of a hiphop album. you had me surprised at how my absence can glide through your day like a low-lying fog, misting your closed windows that you can’t help but wipe them with a music sheet.

how does my absence affect you now? yours bites like the first wave of frost after a long and scorching summer.

we don’t care like we used to. love is like this planet’s weather—

a radiant sun of ginger ale, the cobalt skies in cloud mosaic, orchestral sighs of evening air,

then a swerve into

heavy winds of blind despair, periods of torrential rain, a time of endless drought—

and now we face the desert. how does my absence affect you now?

i don’t care like i used to, yet today it rained again and, of all things past,

i remembered you.

[elprosa-elpoesa]

good night

An aging crone might have mistaken your dreams for dust. She has them collected underneath her broom in her haste to wash your dirty laundry and hang them dry.

— e.l

[elprosa-elpoesa]

you are the stale cotton scent of dim-lit thrift shops. i walk by aisles of outgrown fabric, my fingers caressing a ruffled blouse or an old woolen jacket, and frayed strands of secondhand clothing float by unnoticed. the city is growing quiet: late hours descend upon heavy arms and jaded feet, carrying the lure of sleep. homes and families await, while i spend time drifting from rack to rack, eyes on an occasional find. the distinct smell i frown upon never leaves, like memories i'd rather not recall but can't forget. this is how addiction is—

we expose ourselves to things that gradually kill us.

i find it comical to drop dead between rows of donated clothing somebody profits from— a lame capitalist joke. yet you are the stale cotton smell of dim-lit thrift shops, and i find myself departing only to return over and over again, until stray cotton strands suffocate my lungs, while around me the city prepares to sleep.

— e.l

[elprosa-elpoesa]

on wild strawberries

Buddha told a parable in sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Source: http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/18aparable.html