Untitled (Cold Water)
May. 12th, 2005 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crowsI’m awake, but it’s too late to be. It’s getting harder and harder for me to sleep. I think it’s getting harder for everyone to sleep.
I can’t even smell the spring on the air anymore; the sky is a lifeless grey blanket sweeping from horizon to jagged horizon. It feels like I’m surrounded by that, by steel. In a way, there’s a truth. In the quiet space between my breaths, I can hear the scanner in my car, some dozen paces behind me with its door open. Static and comm chatter that, a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make out for all its abbreviations and arcane, military idiosyncrasies.
But I, like the rest of the populace of this city, have learned to listen and understand. The flattened words, filtered through too many speakers, travels through my brain like every day language, listening ever for the order to evacuate. It hasn’t come yet. Most, if not all, of it isn’t even to us… but it’s always there, throbbing in the background of our lives, having replaced music and television both in most homes.
I’ve watched more than one family changed… dinner-table banter, loud games, arguing, have all vacated so many homes. Elders and children alike sit around their tables and living rooms, relegated to careful silence, just in case the order comes. Some of them are listening for the voices of loved ones who are in the force, giving and receiving orders in the perpetual stream of short communications between soldiers and officers. I’m still listening, in this time that should have been private and silent. I used to stand over the ocean with everything else put from mind, barely breathing so that I may better sense the voice of God, but now I am distracted – mortal, deaf, and dying.
My species has pushed war to the deepest and highest corners of earth and heaven. There is no inch of space, that we can reach, that has not felt the gouge of mankind’s favorite sport. Even the untouchable sea, otherwise unconquerable by science, knows the devil’s hand. Beneath the grey waves that pan out endlessly before me, thousands of pounds of ammunition waits in anxious hibernation for the impending moment of need. It’s ideal… cheap, cool, and temperature-regulated by Mother Nature herself.
I bend to pick up a rock from the shore, damp with slight rainfall that I hadn’t noticed until this moment. It is smooth and old, having traveled with ancient complacency through the vast and terrible sea. I can never guess how many rivers it has bumped down, the black depths to which it has been cast. But I will take it from the sea, bring it home as a simply gift to my lover. We exchange things like this, now, much more frequently than traditional symbols of affection. Last week he brought me a slender poplar branch laden with half-sprouted, damp leaves. I put it in a vase in my kitchen, right next to the window.
He pulled me to him, brushing the edge of his thumb over my cheek as he drew my lips to his. On his hands, I could smell the delicate, rainy balsam of budding poplar.
Standing up and pulling the small, grey stone to my heart, I look back to the sea.
“I’m so sorry.” I say, and turn to go.
I can’t even smell the spring on the air anymore; the sky is a lifeless grey blanket sweeping from horizon to jagged horizon. It feels like I’m surrounded by that, by steel. In a way, there’s a truth. In the quiet space between my breaths, I can hear the scanner in my car, some dozen paces behind me with its door open. Static and comm chatter that, a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make out for all its abbreviations and arcane, military idiosyncrasies.
But I, like the rest of the populace of this city, have learned to listen and understand. The flattened words, filtered through too many speakers, travels through my brain like every day language, listening ever for the order to evacuate. It hasn’t come yet. Most, if not all, of it isn’t even to us… but it’s always there, throbbing in the background of our lives, having replaced music and television both in most homes.
I’ve watched more than one family changed… dinner-table banter, loud games, arguing, have all vacated so many homes. Elders and children alike sit around their tables and living rooms, relegated to careful silence, just in case the order comes. Some of them are listening for the voices of loved ones who are in the force, giving and receiving orders in the perpetual stream of short communications between soldiers and officers. I’m still listening, in this time that should have been private and silent. I used to stand over the ocean with everything else put from mind, barely breathing so that I may better sense the voice of God, but now I am distracted – mortal, deaf, and dying.
My species has pushed war to the deepest and highest corners of earth and heaven. There is no inch of space, that we can reach, that has not felt the gouge of mankind’s favorite sport. Even the untouchable sea, otherwise unconquerable by science, knows the devil’s hand. Beneath the grey waves that pan out endlessly before me, thousands of pounds of ammunition waits in anxious hibernation for the impending moment of need. It’s ideal… cheap, cool, and temperature-regulated by Mother Nature herself.
I bend to pick up a rock from the shore, damp with slight rainfall that I hadn’t noticed until this moment. It is smooth and old, having traveled with ancient complacency through the vast and terrible sea. I can never guess how many rivers it has bumped down, the black depths to which it has been cast. But I will take it from the sea, bring it home as a simply gift to my lover. We exchange things like this, now, much more frequently than traditional symbols of affection. Last week he brought me a slender poplar branch laden with half-sprouted, damp leaves. I put it in a vase in my kitchen, right next to the window.
He pulled me to him, brushing the edge of his thumb over my cheek as he drew my lips to his. On his hands, I could smell the delicate, rainy balsam of budding poplar.
Standing up and pulling the small, grey stone to my heart, I look back to the sea.
“I’m so sorry.” I say, and turn to go.