This was my final project for my contemporary literature course at Brown this summer. I figured I'd show it to you guys to get some feedback.
0. The Fool
Somewhere along the way, I’d given up.
The person inside me, built up over so many years, fashioned in the wants and the needs and the loves and the hates, cracked, or turned black, or got infected, and fell away, into nothing. I had been emptied of myself, my identity. I was no one, and no one was mine. And in my emptiness, I felt free, and in need of adventure. Something tugged at my heart, or what should’ve been my heart, and so I left behind my life, and chased the horizon.
I walked for a very, very long while. Time melted into one long hybrid of day and night, colors of the sun and moon running and bleeding into each other. I stuck to the woods, and, when I needed to, ate whatever I could find. I slept in the shelter of the trees.
The world seems much bigger when you don’t have anything but wanderlust in you. Impossibly big, like you’re looking through a child’s eyes, reliving the days when anything was possible, and everything was filled with magic and secrets.
On the fifth day (or week, or month, or second -- I couldn’t tell anymore), I found myself at a crossroads, the road I walked strewn with fallen amber-orange leaves and diverging into two winding paths. One disappeared into a thick fog. The other led to a great city, shining and jutting with diamond sky-scrapers. A man with a long gray beard and a dead-beat flannel shirt sat on a stool at the fork in the road, grinning at me in anticipation. He was missing every other tooth. A small, scruffy dog sat at his heels.
We stared at each other, then; for how long, I forget. After a while, I shrugged and said, “What now? Which path do I take?”
The man laughed a deep, hoarse laugh, and said, in a voice that sounded like it had been dunked in whiskey and hung in a smoke hut, “Well, I suppose that’s up to you, isn’t it? Do you wander still, without obligations or responsibilities, further into the unknown? Or do you return to your life, and face up to what you’ve done?”
“What did I do?” I asked, blankly. My feet hurt. I felt like I was missing something. The old man merely laughed again, deeper and hoarser than before, like I was the dumbest, most funniest thing in the whole wide world. When he was done laughing, he pretended not to notice me, and when I gave up on trying to get more out of him, I turned on the old fool and walked onward, into the fog. Thick as it was, I could still just barely make out the path in front of me, and after a time, I came to a precipice, over which the fog spilled, down into a gaping maw.
It took me a while, but I finally realized that the little dog that had sat by the old man was now seated at my feet, looking up at me expectantly. A voice inside my mind rang out; “Look at yourself. This isn’t life. This is nothing. Now is your only chance. Turn back, or jump. Make your choice.”
“What happens if I jump? Will I die? Will I continue to wander?”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to find that out by yourself.”
A moment of deliberation, or hesitation. I fidget, swallow, take a deep breath. And...
IV. The Lovers
It took only the (sweetest) of words
O o z i n g from serpent’s tongue
Like molasses
Head-swimming
Delicate fingers
pluck
the fruit
Like a glowing heart
From tree’s
bowing appendage
And as she bites into the tender flesh
Black rivets running down her chin
Like oil
They take her face
And shake her head
And scream into deaf ears
What have you done?
Where will we go?
“Listen,” the man at the gate said
“There are clouds in the distance,
and it’s dangerous out there
and I’ll probably lose my job for this
But take it
And use it if you have to.”
Somewhere in the distance,
a flame lit up the night sky.
One day, they’ll return, you see--
vomit up the fruit of good and evil
shed their clothes
regain their innocence
and be that much closer to God.
But until then
Bodies twine together
Underneath milky stars
Forever for the first time.
XIV. Temperance
She does the judging
Lilies push up in the background
Hades at her heels
Crowned in night
Weighing our value in hand
Before passing us on
To the beasts behind our eyes.
XVIII. The Moon
It was a solemn affair, your wedding to her, but you loved her, and she loved you, in her own way, and so it was the proper thing to do. Plus, you’d gone and knocked her up. You not only wanted to, you had an obligation to marry the girl. And so you did.
She was a sweet, little thing, beautiful in every sense of the word, and how she could ever love you, a great big bear of a man, you never understood, but you thanked God for it every day. She cooked your food, and cleaned your house (a small but cozy cottage, far up in the mountains), and, when the time came, she took care of your child. Your little girl, Rosemary.
You had to leave her everyday, for twelve hours, travel to the town at the base of the mountain and work in the factory to put bread on the table. You missed them terribly, and went time came to head home, you’d scramble up that mountain side, throw open the door, pick her up in your arms and give her a big kiss. And she’d kiss you back, and smile, and gaze at you with those big eyes, and you’d fill to the brim with your love for her.
Yes, she was beautiful, and wonderful, and she was your love.
Then she started leaving at night.
When the moon was swollen and yellow and prostrated over the sky - those were the nights when she’d go out the longest. You’d found out about it maybe a year into your marriage, when she woke you as she stirred and rose from the bed. You were usually a heavy sleeper, but dark nights like that one made you nervous. For your girl, of course, who slept beside your bed in a crib you made yourself, and for your wife.
You thought nothing of it. It is not a strange thing, to rise in the night for water, or so you believed that was her business. When you heard the door hinges creak, however, you sprang from your bed, stomped down the stairs, and found your wife gone. The door hung open, somber moonlight filtering in through the windows and casting the interior of your cabin in yellow-white. Frantic, you stumbled outside, heart-pounding, and that was when you saw the wolf, perched on the rock face outside the house, staring at you with ice blue eyes.
You thought, just like hers.
You looked away, searching for blood, a body, or clothes. Nothing. And when you turned back, the wolf had gone, and a forlorn howl echoed across the sky.
You returned to your cabin that morning, despondent and defeated after a night of unsuccessful searching. You walked through the door, into your kitchen, and found your wife, sitting in her favorite chair and nursing Rosemary. You fell into a pile at her feet, weeping with relief, unable to choke out any words. She tried to calm you down, asking you what was wrong, where you’d been, how she’d been so worried, and once you’d collected yourself, you had breakfast, and not another word was spoken of the event for all the time they were together.
It happened on every full moon, and when you were ready, you decided to follow her. You pretended to fall asleep in your chair, by the fire, lulled by your ale, and when she crept down the stairs, and out the door, you followed her.
She did not see you, big as you were. Her eyes were fixated upon the moon.
What happened next you could never fully recall. A twist of limbs, hair tossed in the wind, grey sleek fur, ice blue eyes. Wolf, you thought, the wolf from that night, and you jumped to grab her, pull her away, and the thing that was half your wife and half animal turned with rows of razor teeth and roared a roar that made your bones quake.
Stumble back. Grey fur. Ice blue eyes.
“I could’ve been yours,” she-- it said. “I could’ve always been yours.”
And then she was gone, and this time, she never came back.
But you never gave up hoping. And sometimes, you hear it - a lingering sentiment, or a reward for your love of such a thing - a long, forlorn howl, arcing through the thick air, on nights of fullest moon.
XVI. The Tower
it is Babylon.
it is Rome.
it is Hiroshima.
it is fire burning the house you lived in as a child.
it is his first inhalation of blue smoke.
it is the razor she drags across her skin.
it is you
and you
and you.
XXI. The World
Those were the beautiful days. When you spent your time as you spent your money, in long decadent minutes or hours, or seconds. Lazing in the grass, or in the trees, or out on the river. Your Golden Afternoons, she used to call them. Afternoons spent eating sweet cakes, and fruit, and drinking sweet tea. Mornings spent sleeping in, and nights spent dancing, or making love, or both. Smiles lasted forever, and you can recall the way the wind smelled, fragrant and warm. You wished they could never end. And maybe they did, or maybe they didn’t.
XIII. Death
“---afraid of it as much as I am afraid of walking into the next room.”
Take my hand, rise from yourself, and follow me into the darkness.
It’s not an end, it’s a beginning.
0. The Fool
Somewhere along the way, I’d given up.
The person inside me, built up over so many years, fashioned in the wants and the needs and the loves and the hates, cracked, or turned black, or got infected, and fell away, into nothing. I had been emptied of myself, my identity. I was no one, and no one was mine. And in my emptiness, I felt free, and in need of adventure. Something tugged at my heart, or what should’ve been my heart, and so I left behind my life, and chased the horizon.
I walked for a very, very long while. Time melted into one long hybrid of day and night, colors of the sun and moon running and bleeding into each other. I stuck to the woods, and, when I needed to, ate whatever I could find. I slept in the shelter of the trees.
The world seems much bigger when you don’t have anything but wanderlust in you. Impossibly big, like you’re looking through a child’s eyes, reliving the days when anything was possible, and everything was filled with magic and secrets.
On the fifth day (or week, or month, or second -- I couldn’t tell anymore), I found myself at a crossroads, the road I walked strewn with fallen amber-orange leaves and diverging into two winding paths. One disappeared into a thick fog. The other led to a great city, shining and jutting with diamond sky-scrapers. A man with a long gray beard and a dead-beat flannel shirt sat on a stool at the fork in the road, grinning at me in anticipation. He was missing every other tooth. A small, scruffy dog sat at his heels.
We stared at each other, then; for how long, I forget. After a while, I shrugged and said, “What now? Which path do I take?”
The man laughed a deep, hoarse laugh, and said, in a voice that sounded like it had been dunked in whiskey and hung in a smoke hut, “Well, I suppose that’s up to you, isn’t it? Do you wander still, without obligations or responsibilities, further into the unknown? Or do you return to your life, and face up to what you’ve done?”
“What did I do?” I asked, blankly. My feet hurt. I felt like I was missing something. The old man merely laughed again, deeper and hoarser than before, like I was the dumbest, most funniest thing in the whole wide world. When he was done laughing, he pretended not to notice me, and when I gave up on trying to get more out of him, I turned on the old fool and walked onward, into the fog. Thick as it was, I could still just barely make out the path in front of me, and after a time, I came to a precipice, over which the fog spilled, down into a gaping maw.
It took me a while, but I finally realized that the little dog that had sat by the old man was now seated at my feet, looking up at me expectantly. A voice inside my mind rang out; “Look at yourself. This isn’t life. This is nothing. Now is your only chance. Turn back, or jump. Make your choice.”
“What happens if I jump? Will I die? Will I continue to wander?”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to find that out by yourself.”
A moment of deliberation, or hesitation. I fidget, swallow, take a deep breath. And...
IV. The Lovers
It took only the (sweetest) of words
O o z i n g from serpent’s tongue
Like molasses
Head-swimming
Delicate fingers
pluck
the fruit
Like a glowing heart
From tree’s
bowing appendage
And as she bites into the tender flesh
Black rivets running down her chin
Like oil
They take her face
And shake her head
And scream into deaf ears
What have you done?
Where will we go?
“Listen,” the man at the gate said
“There are clouds in the distance,
and it’s dangerous out there
and I’ll probably lose my job for this
But take it
And use it if you have to.”
Somewhere in the distance,
a flame lit up the night sky.
One day, they’ll return, you see--
vomit up the fruit of good and evil
shed their clothes
regain their innocence
and be that much closer to God.
But until then
Bodies twine together
Underneath milky stars
Forever for the first time.
XIV. Temperance
She does the judging
Lilies push up in the background
Hades at her heels
Crowned in night
Weighing our value in hand
Before passing us on
To the beasts behind our eyes.
XVIII. The Moon
It was a solemn affair, your wedding to her, but you loved her, and she loved you, in her own way, and so it was the proper thing to do. Plus, you’d gone and knocked her up. You not only wanted to, you had an obligation to marry the girl. And so you did.
She was a sweet, little thing, beautiful in every sense of the word, and how she could ever love you, a great big bear of a man, you never understood, but you thanked God for it every day. She cooked your food, and cleaned your house (a small but cozy cottage, far up in the mountains), and, when the time came, she took care of your child. Your little girl, Rosemary.
You had to leave her everyday, for twelve hours, travel to the town at the base of the mountain and work in the factory to put bread on the table. You missed them terribly, and went time came to head home, you’d scramble up that mountain side, throw open the door, pick her up in your arms and give her a big kiss. And she’d kiss you back, and smile, and gaze at you with those big eyes, and you’d fill to the brim with your love for her.
Yes, she was beautiful, and wonderful, and she was your love.
Then she started leaving at night.
When the moon was swollen and yellow and prostrated over the sky - those were the nights when she’d go out the longest. You’d found out about it maybe a year into your marriage, when she woke you as she stirred and rose from the bed. You were usually a heavy sleeper, but dark nights like that one made you nervous. For your girl, of course, who slept beside your bed in a crib you made yourself, and for your wife.
You thought nothing of it. It is not a strange thing, to rise in the night for water, or so you believed that was her business. When you heard the door hinges creak, however, you sprang from your bed, stomped down the stairs, and found your wife gone. The door hung open, somber moonlight filtering in through the windows and casting the interior of your cabin in yellow-white. Frantic, you stumbled outside, heart-pounding, and that was when you saw the wolf, perched on the rock face outside the house, staring at you with ice blue eyes.
You thought, just like hers.
You looked away, searching for blood, a body, or clothes. Nothing. And when you turned back, the wolf had gone, and a forlorn howl echoed across the sky.
You returned to your cabin that morning, despondent and defeated after a night of unsuccessful searching. You walked through the door, into your kitchen, and found your wife, sitting in her favorite chair and nursing Rosemary. You fell into a pile at her feet, weeping with relief, unable to choke out any words. She tried to calm you down, asking you what was wrong, where you’d been, how she’d been so worried, and once you’d collected yourself, you had breakfast, and not another word was spoken of the event for all the time they were together.
It happened on every full moon, and when you were ready, you decided to follow her. You pretended to fall asleep in your chair, by the fire, lulled by your ale, and when she crept down the stairs, and out the door, you followed her.
She did not see you, big as you were. Her eyes were fixated upon the moon.
What happened next you could never fully recall. A twist of limbs, hair tossed in the wind, grey sleek fur, ice blue eyes. Wolf, you thought, the wolf from that night, and you jumped to grab her, pull her away, and the thing that was half your wife and half animal turned with rows of razor teeth and roared a roar that made your bones quake.
Stumble back. Grey fur. Ice blue eyes.
“I could’ve been yours,” she-- it said. “I could’ve always been yours.”
And then she was gone, and this time, she never came back.
But you never gave up hoping. And sometimes, you hear it - a lingering sentiment, or a reward for your love of such a thing - a long, forlorn howl, arcing through the thick air, on nights of fullest moon.
XVI. The Tower
it is Babylon.
it is Rome.
it is Hiroshima.
it is fire burning the house you lived in as a child.
it is his first inhalation of blue smoke.
it is the razor she drags across her skin.
it is you
and you
and you.
XXI. The World
Those were the beautiful days. When you spent your time as you spent your money, in long decadent minutes or hours, or seconds. Lazing in the grass, or in the trees, or out on the river. Your Golden Afternoons, she used to call them. Afternoons spent eating sweet cakes, and fruit, and drinking sweet tea. Mornings spent sleeping in, and nights spent dancing, or making love, or both. Smiles lasted forever, and you can recall the way the wind smelled, fragrant and warm. You wished they could never end. And maybe they did, or maybe they didn’t.
XIII. Death
“---afraid of it as much as I am afraid of walking into the next room.”
Take my hand, rise from yourself, and follow me into the darkness.
It’s not an end, it’s a beginning.
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