Sara Veglahn
A new moon. The kind
seen in daytime. A chance of snow or freezing rain. The heat wave was predicted
to last for several more weeks. And the newly hatched mayflies covered
everything. In meadows, crickets formed their song. In the songs a train coming
from far away, an ear pressed to the rails. Something sloshing. All of the
ladies in their Egyptian costumes were standing on the balustrades, their arms
and hands making sharp angles. Hundreds of ladies and hundreds of angles.
I moved through
corridors. Blood to blood. No light. Lost.
A motorcycle or car raced
to where someone, a man, would pull me out, sticky and wet. A bus or train was
racing there, where a man, I donÕt know who, pulled me out. I was no longer
attached to my mother. I was no longer attached to my father.
If I were we, it would
have been us who saw the train pass that afternoon. We two would have gone
there together, running across a sandy field, honey-colored, our ears to the
rails and waiting. Our red satchels in our hands, we two together, one taller
and older, one believing everything the other said.
If I were we, if one
were two, our days would pass along as a pair, together. We could carry the
weight of the family, our father and his hives, our mother on her bicycle
riding away towards the station. WeÕd whisper across the small space between
our beds at night.
Here there are no
rivers, only dust and windows shaped like hives. We would find footprints
around the well near the abandoned barn that we would run towards every day
after school. We would speak into the water down in the well calling out to
spirits and we would believe that the spirits would come to us.
And days spent
indoors, no one else but us in the house of hive-windows. One would try to
strangle the cat, one would pretend she was dead lying flat on the floor among
the shards of pottery fallen from a shelf.
Soon we two would
split when one would leave and be lost for some time, hiding among the forest
trees and not wanting to be found. But later, one would be found and taken home
and little by little would learn to forget.
Up and running we
learned the spread, collected mountains and marched through the vast prospect. Bone
was dug. Autumn and up into fire. Still between the far and the inclines, we
kept our blankets near our buckets for what we carry is enough. We dwell in
ice. Everything was not a forest. Silent between our settlement, we stood in
our boots and the path where our shadows turned into damp breath. In the rust
behind reeds there were femurs with our mountain, our hands covered in lush
binding. A blueprint where our faces should be. We were statues, rock
formations. We grew smaller, standing covered in mist. And the spot where there
was an idea of metal we abandoned. And knives pulled from this place where we
cling to shiny water and from water we glow. There were pools of red spikes. We
held them between our lips like eels. A river carried our breath where we
handed out our burdens. We came to reassure the bodies we found. My shoulder
equaled water equaled tree. The procession of a sidewinder folded into a
blueprint. Take this water, O lingering sun. WeÕve made our way: one if by
melancholy, two if by laughter. Called these days ŌSlowly.Ķ Our private
continuation, our blueprint from light to lies. Midair and vine—it was
just so. Now and then: houses. The procession moves along. And coneflowers
build notes toward a cure. We sang many different songs but became full of our
dwelling on everything. Our valuable-enough thoughts were impossible—our
garments were made of sand. To have and take what weÕve been given is
mercenary. Fires have blindness, and we made steps toward learning how to be
clearly strewn. The ones who breathed overtaken by yellow poppies. Who went
back tethered and lacking speech. The tiny effort color makes to climb. See,
itÕs smaller now. You are fixed in flames and your horse returns slowly. Sky or
tiny, weÕve been glistening as we were carried and were enclosed and crumbled
carefully. I am lightning waiting for you. Everything collapses in my strands.