Look at the wind
the flower,
the debris
And take in the
sound of
rustling oak leaves
and the arrogance
of dissonant cigarette trees
And realize the past
we could have had.
And remember the way
you cocked your hip
and spat and lied
and dived and dipped
and swore sweet blasphemies
off your lips
rolling around in an
angry-shit-fit
that skewered me
from your grace?
But that was okay
all right
and fine,
because sometimes
we screamed
and hollered
and climbed
all in search of
what we called
the divine,
And still we fell too fast
And still we fell too fast
And still we fell too fast
To feel the heat trapped in your hair
to search the stars with a caressing air
and tip the tables without a care
And I don’t know
I don’t know why
I don’t know
I don’t know why
We faltered
broke,
slipped
and cracked
and looked outside
and wept
black
white
gray
and old
so we watched
the movie slowly
unfold
and grow
underneath
my skin
And days went by
and then later weeks
and still the air was
warm and sweet
And I filled my thoughts
with dreams for you
And I filled my thoughts of
dreams of you
And I filled my thoughts of
dreams without you
And still,
we persisted.
And when
we finally blundered
to the end
when we cast our stones
and left our sin
I tasted only the bitterness
of your kiss.
And felt
the way
you felt.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
A Deer In December
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-T. S. Eliot
Edward was in the backseat, looking at the semi-trucks as they blasted past their red sedan on the highway. His father and mother were in the front, talking softly. They thought Edward was asleep. The truck headlights blurred together as they flew across the dirty asphalt in the night. Edward listened.
“Well, he can’t do much thats certain.”
“Eric, he tries.”
“ You’re right. It’s just, I wish he did something. Like a sport. Hey, we should see if he wants to play baseball.”
“You know he hates sports. Remember when we tried to get him to play soccer?
“Well, the boy needs something to do.”
Edward raised his head slightly so that he could look at the stars as they blurred together with the headlights. The window was getting a little cold, he had a sweater that he could put on the glass, but he didn’t want to betray his consciousness. His father continued in a sordid tone: “ I mean Marcie, he stays in his room all day, looking out the window. He needs something, even if he just reads comic books.” At this Edward’s mother shook her head slightly, letting her soft curls bounce between her shoulders.
“Well, maybe he’ll find something interesting this weekend.” They were on the way to Green Bay Wisconsin. Edward doubted that anything interesting ever occurred in Wisconsin, but he didn’t voice his opinion when his parents told him they were going. Edward was seven. A fine age to be, and he thought so. Dad was wrong, he did things. Mom was wrong too, he was interested. He liked staring out the window, watching the world. He liked school, the windows were bigger there. Towering glossy portals they allowed his opaque reflection an escape outside of the classroom. Some days his reflection would play on the playground, other days it would simply sit in the bushes, chatting with the birds. The whole time he could learn while he watched himself, in many ways-Edward thought-he was an amazing boy. Still, Edward remained silent and watched the trucks.
Marcie looked back at her son, and saw the pale visage of a skinny blonde seven year old boy, his head resting in the window, breathing rhythmically, as though he were asleep:
“Maybe he’ll be an artist. Wouldn’t that be nice, Eric?”
“Anythings better than nothing.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
Edward closed his eyes. What do you see when you close your eyes, Edward wondered? Black?
Or was it nothing? If it was nothing then what’s wrong with being nothing? He could always think better when he closed his eyes. And if nothing helps you think, well then maybe nothing is better than school. If he was nothing, then maybe he should teach. Edward imagined himself at the front of a classroom with a hundred students.
“Now.” He said. “All of you close your eyes.” They did, all one hundred of them. They sat and closed their eyes. “ What do you see?” Edward asked. None of them spoke. That was OK, Edward knew that it was beyond them. “Do you see red?” He asked.
“No.” they said, puzzled.
“Do you see black?”.
“YES” they answered.
“Wrong.” Edward. “You see nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Then they started to think. But Edward knew. Edward knew that it was still beyond them. So the next day, when they sat down, he shut the shades, he turned off the lights, and he blinded every one of them. They screamed, and they yelled horrible profanities, and they tried to find the door but they couldn’t, so they screamed at Edward: “Why? Why did you blind us?”
“Because that was the only way that you could see.”
“Kill him.” They screamed, and the mass of students closed in on Edward. They grabbed their books, their pencils, their calculators, and flung them in the direction of his voice. Then Edward saw their horrible screaming, blinded, disfigured faces slowly close in on him. “But I taught you” Edward said. “Now you can see.” And their hands punched forward, and their legs kicked forward and they enclosed Edward, and then he woke up.
“Edward, we're here.”
He looked out the window, it was snowing. His families cabin was terrifyingly dark, and the snow that swept down from the hill it sat upon made a low whistling noise that penetrated the car and settled into Edward’s ear. They got out of the car. Edward watched his parents unpack. They shuffled around the trunk, randomly pulling out pieces of luggage. They were clumsy, and awkward, leaving a disheveled path of dirty snow and disoriented suitcases under their feet. Edward thought that they looked like his students; clawing viscously at their teacher. Edward shuddered, and his mother saw him. “ Eric, hurry up! Edward’s getting cold.”
“Of course my Dear, almost done.” Edward’s father slammed the trunk and they picked up their luggage and headed to the cabin. His father pulled out a jingled mix of keys, and Edward thought about how the blind would hear him. His father unlocked the door, and they entered the cabin. In Edward’s mind, the cabin was broken up into two big pieces, and five little ones. The top and bottom floors were the big pieces, they divided the living from the sleeping. The bottom floor had two smaller pieces. The first piece, which Edward and his parents had just walked into, was a living space. This was the largest of the five pieces, and the most barren. Two recliners and a small sofa stood to Edward’s left, in front of the furniture was a destitute fireplace that was cracked and smoldered. In front of Edward was a vast space that enshrouded the small oasis of comfort, making the outside of it look bleak and dark. It made Edward feel like a coward.
They went through the first piece and Edward clung to his parents side; then he remembered their awkward clawing, and walked slightly behind them. His father dumped their luggage by the kitchen door, the second piece of the cabin, and flipped the lights on. The kitchen was small, but also sparse. On the right side of the room was a stove and oven, in the middle a small table, and on the window a dirty green curtain.
“Eric, why don’t you go get Edward into his PJ’s while I fix up some hot coca”
“All right.” Edward’s father took his sons suitcase and started walking to the staircase on the right side of the first piece. Edward followed. Upstairs, Edward was guided to the bathroom first (the third piece) then to his room (the fourth piece) Edward’s father went to his parents room (the fifth piece) and laid their luggage on the floor. Soon, Edward’s Pajama’s were on (only his mother called them PJ’s) and he was downstairs sipping coca. An hour later he was in bed asleep.
The blind didn’t come back, but Edward was still a teacher, standing in front of a giant black board. On it, he drew his parents, and he drew a truck, and star, and a cup of hot coca. The black board was huge, so he drew a sun, and some clouds, and a happy face, and a sad face, and a face that was somewhere between the two. Then Edward took an eraser, and started slowly wiping the faces away. He gently wiped off the clouds, and the sun and the coca, and the truck; and then he got to his parents and, carefully, wonderfully, he erased their eyes. And then he erased his own.
The next morning Edward sat at the breakfast table eating his eggs. His father came down and also sat, waiting for his meal, sipping his coffee. Edward’s mother hurriedly opened a package of bacon, and slung the fatty red strips onto the frying pan. The grizzled fat simmered loudly, filling the silence of the room with odd pops, and snaps. Edward’s father spoke:
“You know Marcie, I’ve just got an idea.”
“What’s that honey?” She could not hear him over the bacon.
“ I said, I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, I was thinking that perhaps today Edward and I could go hunting.” Hunting, Edward thought. To take somethings life, to steal somethings sight, to give them nothingness, what an awful way to teach.
“I don’t know dear, do you think Edward would like it?”
“ Well, Edward, what do you think?” Edward was silent for a time. He sat up on his seat and neatly cropped his eggs into a small mound.
“Dear, I don’t think he wants to. Besides, isn’t it out of season?”
“Just ending, I think. We probably wouldn’t see anything anyway. Edward, do you want to go?” Edward was sickened, a little, but he also held a morbid fascination in his mind. He looked at his eggs, and his bacon, and realized that he had already hunted in the grocery store.
He spoke: “Yes, lets go.” His father smiled. A brief charming flash of his coffee stained teeth. “Excellent, I’ll get the gun ready.” His father left the table as his mother finished the bacon, and placed it neatly in the center of the table.
“Edward, you don’t have to go.” He looked at his mother. He knew she was right, that he didn’t have to go, but he felt obliged; especially after the conversation he overheard while looking at the trucks.
“ I want to.” His mother smiled, lifted her towel from her waist, and rung it forcefully over the sink. Edward watched as the water was violently squeezed from the cloth, cleansing it of its imperfections.
His father had the gun. He held it firmly. Edward followed him. They looked at the bleak sky left from the first snow storm. They looked at the dead woods, freshly buried. Edward was breathing hard as they reached the edge of the woods, he wanted to hold the gun. He wanted to feel the polished wood. He wanted to lift the barrel, take aim, and shoot; just to prove that the gun was perfect.
They reached the woods, and started hiking through the dead bramble and fresh snow. Edward looked at the back of his father’s coat. He saw the plaid pattern. The red. The black. The fuzz sticking out of the fleece. They reached a clearing. And there it was.
“Edward! Look!” His father said in a hurried whisper. Edward looked at it. Saw the camouflage. The brown. The black. The fuzz, slicked down on its sides. It was beautiful, picking its way through the snow. His father raised the gun. Edward looked at its eyes. They were big, and black.
Black.
There was nothing in its eyes. Not like his fathers. His fathers were crisp, and blue, and matched his dirty blonde hair. There was something in his eyes. It had nothing. Big, bulbous nothing. His father took aim. Edward still had something. He closed his eyes. Felt the nothing. He felt it. Felt it feel him. Felt their nothing, together. Two nothings. His was only temporary.
“Plug your ears.”
He didn’t. Heard the crack. The nothing was gone.
They ate some of the deer for dinner. Edward’s father smiled the whole time. Edward stared at his plate. He ate it. Or. At least. He tried. He closed his eyes and ate.
“...and then we saw the deer. It was pretty special. Did you have fun Edward?”
“...yeah. It was fun.”
“Well, good. Maybe we’ll go again tomorrow.” Edward’s father smiled contently, and left the table: “I’m going to get some more.” Edward watched him fork the deer onto his plate. He watched the way the translucent brown meat juice pooled around the curves of the cheap plastic. He looked down at his own food, and saw the fat gently swirling in the greasy liquid. He felt sick, and left the table.
That night Edward saw: Brown blind deer. Sitting in his classroom. They were all identical. Each one wore a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie. When Edward looked straight down a row of deer, their antlers lined up perfectly. Each deer blinked simultaneously. Perfectly synchronized, they all stared at Edward in the front of the class. Edward turned, and saw his parents outside the classroom, pounding on the windows, begging him to teach them. He could not. So he taught the deer. He drew trucks on the chalkboard. He drew their lights. He told the deer: “Look out, these lights will not stop for you.”
“But,” they said, “we cannot see them.”
“What?”
“We are blind.” “Not blind, nothing.” Edward said.
“But, how can we see the lights?” Edward looked at his parents clawing at the window. He took their eyes. “Here.” Edward said. “Now you can see in nothing.” And then the glass broke, and he could hear the screams, he could here the profanities of the blind outside. The lights in the room exploded, and showered scalding sparks on the upright deer. Then the trucks emerged from the chalkboard, and ran over the deer. Their bodies flew around the room carrying a fierce inertia, the deer smashed into the walls, into the desks, into the chalkboard. Edward grabbed an eraser from the chalkboard and tried to erase the trucks, but he was not fast enough. By the time that he had erased the trucks, every deer had been hit. He looked at them. Looked at their dirty, brown, black, bloodied, fur and they spoke: “Edward, there is nothing to see in nothing.”
He heard pounding on his door, and he saw smoke trailing out gently from the space between the floor and the bottom of the door. It looked peaceful, as though it meant to be there.
“Edward!” He closed his eyes.
The smoke got in.
He threw his blanket over his head
“Edward! Open the door!”
He thought: The smoke can sneak through my blanket, and through my eyelids.
“Edward! Hurry!”
The smoke can go into the nothing.
What else can do that?
The pounding on his door increased, he tried to get up, couldn’t, looked at his desk table, looked at the airplane over the bed, took a sip of water, closed his eyes again. Felt the smoke, heard the pounding, smelled the burning deer fat.
The door broke.
His parents tumbled into his room.
His father picked up his table, and flung it through his window.
They jumped out.
The stove had caught on fire, from the deer fat, and now the house was covered in flames, that were spreading quickly; beginning to eat the forest. The house was crumbling, tilting listlessly, dying in the fire. Edward looked at his mother, coughing, weeping, searching wearily, trying to comfort him. His father lay on the ground, bent over on his knees, coughing from the smoke. Edward thought: They must learn. Then he took his parents hands, and lead the weary, the bloodied , and the blind; away from the fire, and towards the car.
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-T. S. Eliot
Edward was in the backseat, looking at the semi-trucks as they blasted past their red sedan on the highway. His father and mother were in the front, talking softly. They thought Edward was asleep. The truck headlights blurred together as they flew across the dirty asphalt in the night. Edward listened.
“Well, he can’t do much thats certain.”
“Eric, he tries.”
“ You’re right. It’s just, I wish he did something. Like a sport. Hey, we should see if he wants to play baseball.”
“You know he hates sports. Remember when we tried to get him to play soccer?
“Well, the boy needs something to do.”
Edward raised his head slightly so that he could look at the stars as they blurred together with the headlights. The window was getting a little cold, he had a sweater that he could put on the glass, but he didn’t want to betray his consciousness. His father continued in a sordid tone: “ I mean Marcie, he stays in his room all day, looking out the window. He needs something, even if he just reads comic books.” At this Edward’s mother shook her head slightly, letting her soft curls bounce between her shoulders.
“Well, maybe he’ll find something interesting this weekend.” They were on the way to Green Bay Wisconsin. Edward doubted that anything interesting ever occurred in Wisconsin, but he didn’t voice his opinion when his parents told him they were going. Edward was seven. A fine age to be, and he thought so. Dad was wrong, he did things. Mom was wrong too, he was interested. He liked staring out the window, watching the world. He liked school, the windows were bigger there. Towering glossy portals they allowed his opaque reflection an escape outside of the classroom. Some days his reflection would play on the playground, other days it would simply sit in the bushes, chatting with the birds. The whole time he could learn while he watched himself, in many ways-Edward thought-he was an amazing boy. Still, Edward remained silent and watched the trucks.
Marcie looked back at her son, and saw the pale visage of a skinny blonde seven year old boy, his head resting in the window, breathing rhythmically, as though he were asleep:
“Maybe he’ll be an artist. Wouldn’t that be nice, Eric?”
“Anythings better than nothing.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
Edward closed his eyes. What do you see when you close your eyes, Edward wondered? Black?
Or was it nothing? If it was nothing then what’s wrong with being nothing? He could always think better when he closed his eyes. And if nothing helps you think, well then maybe nothing is better than school. If he was nothing, then maybe he should teach. Edward imagined himself at the front of a classroom with a hundred students.
“Now.” He said. “All of you close your eyes.” They did, all one hundred of them. They sat and closed their eyes. “ What do you see?” Edward asked. None of them spoke. That was OK, Edward knew that it was beyond them. “Do you see red?” He asked.
“No.” they said, puzzled.
“Do you see black?”.
“YES” they answered.
“Wrong.” Edward. “You see nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Then they started to think. But Edward knew. Edward knew that it was still beyond them. So the next day, when they sat down, he shut the shades, he turned off the lights, and he blinded every one of them. They screamed, and they yelled horrible profanities, and they tried to find the door but they couldn’t, so they screamed at Edward: “Why? Why did you blind us?”
“Because that was the only way that you could see.”
“Kill him.” They screamed, and the mass of students closed in on Edward. They grabbed their books, their pencils, their calculators, and flung them in the direction of his voice. Then Edward saw their horrible screaming, blinded, disfigured faces slowly close in on him. “But I taught you” Edward said. “Now you can see.” And their hands punched forward, and their legs kicked forward and they enclosed Edward, and then he woke up.
“Edward, we're here.”
He looked out the window, it was snowing. His families cabin was terrifyingly dark, and the snow that swept down from the hill it sat upon made a low whistling noise that penetrated the car and settled into Edward’s ear. They got out of the car. Edward watched his parents unpack. They shuffled around the trunk, randomly pulling out pieces of luggage. They were clumsy, and awkward, leaving a disheveled path of dirty snow and disoriented suitcases under their feet. Edward thought that they looked like his students; clawing viscously at their teacher. Edward shuddered, and his mother saw him. “ Eric, hurry up! Edward’s getting cold.”
“Of course my Dear, almost done.” Edward’s father slammed the trunk and they picked up their luggage and headed to the cabin. His father pulled out a jingled mix of keys, and Edward thought about how the blind would hear him. His father unlocked the door, and they entered the cabin. In Edward’s mind, the cabin was broken up into two big pieces, and five little ones. The top and bottom floors were the big pieces, they divided the living from the sleeping. The bottom floor had two smaller pieces. The first piece, which Edward and his parents had just walked into, was a living space. This was the largest of the five pieces, and the most barren. Two recliners and a small sofa stood to Edward’s left, in front of the furniture was a destitute fireplace that was cracked and smoldered. In front of Edward was a vast space that enshrouded the small oasis of comfort, making the outside of it look bleak and dark. It made Edward feel like a coward.
They went through the first piece and Edward clung to his parents side; then he remembered their awkward clawing, and walked slightly behind them. His father dumped their luggage by the kitchen door, the second piece of the cabin, and flipped the lights on. The kitchen was small, but also sparse. On the right side of the room was a stove and oven, in the middle a small table, and on the window a dirty green curtain.
“Eric, why don’t you go get Edward into his PJ’s while I fix up some hot coca”
“All right.” Edward’s father took his sons suitcase and started walking to the staircase on the right side of the first piece. Edward followed. Upstairs, Edward was guided to the bathroom first (the third piece) then to his room (the fourth piece) Edward’s father went to his parents room (the fifth piece) and laid their luggage on the floor. Soon, Edward’s Pajama’s were on (only his mother called them PJ’s) and he was downstairs sipping coca. An hour later he was in bed asleep.
The blind didn’t come back, but Edward was still a teacher, standing in front of a giant black board. On it, he drew his parents, and he drew a truck, and star, and a cup of hot coca. The black board was huge, so he drew a sun, and some clouds, and a happy face, and a sad face, and a face that was somewhere between the two. Then Edward took an eraser, and started slowly wiping the faces away. He gently wiped off the clouds, and the sun and the coca, and the truck; and then he got to his parents and, carefully, wonderfully, he erased their eyes. And then he erased his own.
The next morning Edward sat at the breakfast table eating his eggs. His father came down and also sat, waiting for his meal, sipping his coffee. Edward’s mother hurriedly opened a package of bacon, and slung the fatty red strips onto the frying pan. The grizzled fat simmered loudly, filling the silence of the room with odd pops, and snaps. Edward’s father spoke:
“You know Marcie, I’ve just got an idea.”
“What’s that honey?” She could not hear him over the bacon.
“ I said, I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, I was thinking that perhaps today Edward and I could go hunting.” Hunting, Edward thought. To take somethings life, to steal somethings sight, to give them nothingness, what an awful way to teach.
“I don’t know dear, do you think Edward would like it?”
“ Well, Edward, what do you think?” Edward was silent for a time. He sat up on his seat and neatly cropped his eggs into a small mound.
“Dear, I don’t think he wants to. Besides, isn’t it out of season?”
“Just ending, I think. We probably wouldn’t see anything anyway. Edward, do you want to go?” Edward was sickened, a little, but he also held a morbid fascination in his mind. He looked at his eggs, and his bacon, and realized that he had already hunted in the grocery store.
He spoke: “Yes, lets go.” His father smiled. A brief charming flash of his coffee stained teeth. “Excellent, I’ll get the gun ready.” His father left the table as his mother finished the bacon, and placed it neatly in the center of the table.
“Edward, you don’t have to go.” He looked at his mother. He knew she was right, that he didn’t have to go, but he felt obliged; especially after the conversation he overheard while looking at the trucks.
“ I want to.” His mother smiled, lifted her towel from her waist, and rung it forcefully over the sink. Edward watched as the water was violently squeezed from the cloth, cleansing it of its imperfections.
His father had the gun. He held it firmly. Edward followed him. They looked at the bleak sky left from the first snow storm. They looked at the dead woods, freshly buried. Edward was breathing hard as they reached the edge of the woods, he wanted to hold the gun. He wanted to feel the polished wood. He wanted to lift the barrel, take aim, and shoot; just to prove that the gun was perfect.
They reached the woods, and started hiking through the dead bramble and fresh snow. Edward looked at the back of his father’s coat. He saw the plaid pattern. The red. The black. The fuzz sticking out of the fleece. They reached a clearing. And there it was.
“Edward! Look!” His father said in a hurried whisper. Edward looked at it. Saw the camouflage. The brown. The black. The fuzz, slicked down on its sides. It was beautiful, picking its way through the snow. His father raised the gun. Edward looked at its eyes. They were big, and black.
Black.
There was nothing in its eyes. Not like his fathers. His fathers were crisp, and blue, and matched his dirty blonde hair. There was something in his eyes. It had nothing. Big, bulbous nothing. His father took aim. Edward still had something. He closed his eyes. Felt the nothing. He felt it. Felt it feel him. Felt their nothing, together. Two nothings. His was only temporary.
“Plug your ears.”
He didn’t. Heard the crack. The nothing was gone.
They ate some of the deer for dinner. Edward’s father smiled the whole time. Edward stared at his plate. He ate it. Or. At least. He tried. He closed his eyes and ate.
“...and then we saw the deer. It was pretty special. Did you have fun Edward?”
“...yeah. It was fun.”
“Well, good. Maybe we’ll go again tomorrow.” Edward’s father smiled contently, and left the table: “I’m going to get some more.” Edward watched him fork the deer onto his plate. He watched the way the translucent brown meat juice pooled around the curves of the cheap plastic. He looked down at his own food, and saw the fat gently swirling in the greasy liquid. He felt sick, and left the table.
That night Edward saw: Brown blind deer. Sitting in his classroom. They were all identical. Each one wore a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie. When Edward looked straight down a row of deer, their antlers lined up perfectly. Each deer blinked simultaneously. Perfectly synchronized, they all stared at Edward in the front of the class. Edward turned, and saw his parents outside the classroom, pounding on the windows, begging him to teach them. He could not. So he taught the deer. He drew trucks on the chalkboard. He drew their lights. He told the deer: “Look out, these lights will not stop for you.”
“But,” they said, “we cannot see them.”
“What?”
“We are blind.” “Not blind, nothing.” Edward said.
“But, how can we see the lights?” Edward looked at his parents clawing at the window. He took their eyes. “Here.” Edward said. “Now you can see in nothing.” And then the glass broke, and he could hear the screams, he could here the profanities of the blind outside. The lights in the room exploded, and showered scalding sparks on the upright deer. Then the trucks emerged from the chalkboard, and ran over the deer. Their bodies flew around the room carrying a fierce inertia, the deer smashed into the walls, into the desks, into the chalkboard. Edward grabbed an eraser from the chalkboard and tried to erase the trucks, but he was not fast enough. By the time that he had erased the trucks, every deer had been hit. He looked at them. Looked at their dirty, brown, black, bloodied, fur and they spoke: “Edward, there is nothing to see in nothing.”
He heard pounding on his door, and he saw smoke trailing out gently from the space between the floor and the bottom of the door. It looked peaceful, as though it meant to be there.
“Edward!” He closed his eyes.
The smoke got in.
He threw his blanket over his head
“Edward! Open the door!”
He thought: The smoke can sneak through my blanket, and through my eyelids.
“Edward! Hurry!”
The smoke can go into the nothing.
What else can do that?
The pounding on his door increased, he tried to get up, couldn’t, looked at his desk table, looked at the airplane over the bed, took a sip of water, closed his eyes again. Felt the smoke, heard the pounding, smelled the burning deer fat.
The door broke.
His parents tumbled into his room.
His father picked up his table, and flung it through his window.
They jumped out.
The stove had caught on fire, from the deer fat, and now the house was covered in flames, that were spreading quickly; beginning to eat the forest. The house was crumbling, tilting listlessly, dying in the fire. Edward looked at his mother, coughing, weeping, searching wearily, trying to comfort him. His father lay on the ground, bent over on his knees, coughing from the smoke. Edward thought: They must learn. Then he took his parents hands, and lead the weary, the bloodied , and the blind; away from the fire, and towards the car.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
