#dustwrites

[mica-dust]

Dryad

Here’s a small passage I like, from my novel;

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Nik kept his eyes glued on his phone, away from his mother, who had elected to leave the trees and walk toward him on the trail. She was more landscape than person these days, mothers can be like that. But in a much more literal sense, Nik’s mother is actually like that. She stood enveloped soft white apple branches, blooming out of season. Her hair and fingers had gone to branch more recently, both curling and splitting on and on for longer than she tended to keep them as a human. Her ribs were roots, visibly entwined in her barken skin demanding to remind you that this person was once full of bones. A smattering of flowers over one ear and a large cumbersome display of a petal dress give the barest illusion of cloying innocence. Her eyes were gone long ago and her smile was dry with splintering wood, but even so, she sees and she smiles. Her thin arms were outstretched to her son, bending too far at the elbow.

She's getting worse.

[dustwrite]

Symphony

The rage sung under my skin, as though every tendon was a string to be roughly grabbed, pulled, plucked, forced to play a harsh melody. An invisible fire, it blazed silently, just out of sight, simultaneously destroying everything inside, and building me up, filling me with an energy that raced round and round and round, searching for a break in the loop, for an escape. Like a song on repeat, every time I hit the end, I found myself at the beginning again, screeching along, the strings worn and sensitive from the endless scratching.

Helplessness beat across and alongside, pulsing in a sharp, irregular pattern. Like fists against brick, it pounded and pounded and pounded. Until it was as raw as the rage from the effort. Then, it rested, curled up, small, quiet, submissive with exhaustion. Eventually, the beating would begin once more, insistent, demanding, begging, pleading, meaningless, worthless.

The indignation and humiliation twisted into a soft harmony just underneath the screaming, overwhelming rage. It was subtle, unsure of itself, almost voiceless altogether. It filled the moments between the strenuous screeching, when the hopelessness was too tired to keep beating. They weren’t quite noticeable, but they still refused to give silence a place where an end could wedge its way in.

The indignation stayed, giving the song an endless drive. The humiliation clung, keeping the song from ending.

Keeping it from being turned on and off at the press of a button. Keeping it from being so carelessly controlled.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t a masterpiece. But it was there.

And it wasn’t over yet.