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The Great Sleep, Snow's Wake, and Robert Browning
by Lana Bella The Great Sleep If I had only known you would forever be an open memoir that would forever haunt my bed… While the outside world hovers just beyond the gated white fence to which the swallows stretch their orchid wings, vines of scarlet Bougainvillea hug terra-cotta walls in vivid clusters of papery bracts, and the rustling bells of beaded wind chimes toss about echoing of sweet lullabies. Yet here I am again, lost roaming this lonely house and kept vigil with the whims of yesterdays within these cold concrete bars. The familiar essence of you once more alights and courses through the wisp veil of air puts to flight misting my mental plate glass; its crawling tides clutch at the frayed strands of my senses and over and over again, threaten to pull me into its deep. The afternoon sun winds its way between the tears of the half-drawn shutters, casting jagged rays of copper and gold upon the strewn paperbacks and aged magazines on the tabletop, and the lamp that lit my corner bed is turned low. While the quiet earth recedes from me, I force myself to hold back the remembrance of your ashen face from seeping itself into my mind, and of the rawboned body of a suffering man and those sad green eyes. Like the time before and the time before that, I would heave myself from our strange empty bed, follow you out into the narrow corridor, down the long dark spiraling stairway, to where your body lies upon the tiles of cold pale stones beside the dying hearth. You half-turn then, eyes fractionally masked, possessively taking hold of the fluttering wisps of my hair, and breathing me in. Even now, as I'm four days, six months and two years already gone after your death, the pale scent of your cologne lingers on our champagne satiny sheets; the gossamer ribbon of your presence caresses still the fine bones of my cheeks, hums that intimate merry breath on my paly lips, raking its lithe fangs over the hollow curve of my neck, sloping upon the gentle rise of my breasts, as it dipping lower forming a sandy fist around the marked blue veins of my upturned wrist; and there at the edge of my once fine-spun fingertips, twirling while beads of sweat take their solitary hunt from the top of my unfurled midnight curls then down earthward to the delicate fan of these honey-shaded toes. Everything stirs where the ache of nostalgia dissolves into a rousing requiem, where the farewell lays its everlasting pulse on the seawall of my shell, and where my mournful fingertips shift through the fine grains of sand. Some says that we forget too soon the things we thought we could never forget, and any word of grace and comfort will eventually leave our heart indifferent and all emotion unstirred. Then why am I ill-fated to cling to this state of despair, endlessly hoping, waiting, longing to catch the husky timbre of your voice, and to feel again the lean muscles shifted beneath your flawlessly tailored cloth. But instead, it's always the same relics that be ever present with me, the grim outline of encroaching overgrowth a dark still mass which threatened to swallow the churchyard whole. That high-wrought iron gate of the burial ground thinly veiled in mist, nameless figures tread on dampen ground in solemn black shawls and rain-overcoats. And before long the heavy echo of your coffin as it's being lowered into the soft-dug mound, blooms after blooms a never-ending flash of brilliant white spiraled down, down with hypnotic speed through the damp June air. Then just as suddenly a soft breeze goes sailing past, startling me out from the deep reverie; all my brooding thoughts, secrets kept and sealed silence climb out with me from the grave, frantically tearing through the clawing spaces between rotting dirt and sweltering air, and in paralyzing haste, rushing back into the airless chamber, where they weigh me down upon your beloved writing chair in the drawing room that still permeates of death's sickly balm and cloying incense. My bare skin rises in an alloy of the day's gold ashes and your scented silver scotch; I bathe in rings of smoky yellow and gray afternoon while hope falls softly from my hands and rust of time clings to the haggard bones. Shakily I touch a raw finger to the trail of wet tears, giving leave to the lurking musical notes of some unearthly vignette to ease me into a half-sleep, while patiently listening, hovering, waiting. Always waiting for the sound of your footsteps, to step out from the depth of stirring shadows behind the quartered shades. Snow's Wake The biting chill of mid-winter had marooned a heaviness on this gathering universe, and rhythmically turned it into an evening of restless ghosts. The air was frosty and carried that callous bite of rawness in it when the wind rose and picked up with it a stagnant cold. The crisp scent of moist snow-fused pines surged upward and drifted over from the neighboring grounds, made aglow by the brilliant gold of the moon; their shadows stood boldly behind in sharp, tapering silhouettes, gave way to the impression that a silent army hovered perpetually, and ever so in stealth silence, kept armed. After a steep climb from beneath a deep depression away at the inlet of the cavern, I lingered there, under the lined overgrowth, buried ankle-deep within what seemed like a mountain of virgin white. My left index finger cautiously stretched toward the edge of a jutting limb, poising just above the chalky tips, toying with the tiny droplets of the dew upon the bed of irregular shaped snowflakes. Then out of the thin air with speed at full tilt, a burst of red-tailed hawks and sooty ravens swooped downward from some aloft hanging branches, leaving a great flurry of pale silver in their wake. The discarded crystals scattered all around, buffeted by the wind, spun side to side as they tumbled then at once, sank to the drenched terrain throughout. For a moment, everything was silent. I stood there heedlessly caved-in, conspicuously lost as to seem utterly posed, deeply unnerved by the otherworldly ambiance. With a large gulp of air dragged in and racked up in my lungs, I fell backward to the snow-veiled earth, where I sensed the ground sloping away beneath my back, uneven and powdery, and where I was found some time much later, staring upward in stock-still silence at the wild blue yonder above me. The distant moon was glowing a saffron-red, gave way to a mosaic slate-gray of the midnight sky a fluid pane of plexi-glass, sharply cutting in two, the jarring realm of the living from the muffled world of the dead. Robert Browning She could not say with any conviction what had turned her love affair into something altogether else, and so gravely out of reach in its current state of ruin. Those sweet bygone days tore alongside her as she broke away, from what she did not know, but whatever it was, it had chased her out alone into the desolate grounds of fate; tumbling and half-falling, retracing memories of and plunging back into the forgotten years. In the recent days, it seemed she could always make out unmistakably the memories of bliss in naiveté, and anguish in wisdom, all engraved upon her waning spirit. The wretched self and her other more able-bodied being, both past and present, were slight in their bearing, and yet, the faint mingling of whispering, sighing and weeping, became the constant noise which accompanied her as they rattled upon the fragile hinges on her soul. The familiar arrival of the after light fluttered by, trailed inward from under the entryway like the rattling tail of autumn smoke, made ominously bright by the hanging kerosene lamp burning ever so softly beside the dusty wooden chair left on to light its way. She breathed in the crisp November dusk, mixed with the sharp pain of the unforgiving tides from the hovering affairs of her recent life. Her gloveless fingers had grown numbed with cold, smoothed along the aged writing chair set away from the curved stairway; the lustrous inky strands had since came loose of the ivory comb and tousled down upon her shoulders in disarray; those amber eyes have lost their dazzling brilliance, now flashed instead of anger and pain, then all at once hurled themselves across the stained teal tiles and directed up, brought to a standstill by the steadfast gaze which reflected back from the looking glass on the dressing vanity against the corner wall, and under the gold-colored lamp they appeared unflinchingly bright with unshed tears. It felt like the whole world had moved on, herself breathed still but not living, abandoning her in a nostalgic and derelict past she'd never again visit. Just as suddenly, a startling sob escaped her lips, conceding that any consoling word of insight already came too late, as if out of whimsy, each and every crafted word had wittingly lodged themselves deep within her catatonic consciousness, idled away under its dark recess while slithered to the bottom-most among the overlays of time, where they at long last, mingled with the other muffled and unspoken thoughts which had lain dormant in hush suspension. The artless illusion of her innocence, made haste by the weight of neglect, had her swiftly sped downward to a maddening void of guilt and torment; and there, was where she stood at sea, on the verge of coming to be a lost beauty, no longer a misspent and simple youth yet holding on to traces of the girl she had been. How hauntingly sad and mad and bad it was, but then how it was sweet, this gravity of regret. And how utterly sad to realize it's too good to leave, and sadder still, too bad to stay. **Robert Browning was written with the poet’s famous quote in mind: How sad and bad and mad it was. But then, how it was sweet. |
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