3/26/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
Sharp as cinnamon, firm like glue, the round tree house by the winds that chime. The old blue door and the rope wrapped around where the trunk splits, a red rope, the basket of oranges put out every morning, the pieces of crossword jigsaw puzzles that lay with sea shells and ear rings and bits of fine metals and hat tassels under the mat and all around it right there in front of the door. The sky streaked with crimson hues, like cheeks, or paint, or one beginning passion to the end door of wars troubles over, in quiet skies and leafs shuffling their plump summer shows so full and fine of body, with old trees shading the young, a skeleton transcending intentionality. That box by the river, quick go and dig up the box. Some one is looking for the key, we’ll see what time has done, cheese and wine to models match, someone go run and dig up the box, we’ll dig all night if we have to.
While I work on the tree house, someone else is putting up a swing, someone else bringing out old boxes of children’s toys. But something happens to that air. Some water comes and bids us through everything into the river. But behind the tree is a mosaic of misunderstanding, and I call everyone over to come out of the wind that blows our thoughts away, to come and sit under a bit of fragmentation. All their faces under that tarp are white and sickly. Some are still looking around them on the ground for their missing pieces. Someone says "I know I can’t remember, but I’ll go out and look, I haven’t checked the apple grove none of us have, it could easily be on the ground there." and they left the tent with that. Some people still checking their pockets, but the more they check the more they loose. They slowly turn dry, gender fades, conviction fades, they look for these things in their pockets, but then loose their memories and sit and watch with nothing. The wind blows and the color leaches from everything around us save the tapstry of misconseption hanging over us. Another person stands, for one more full push of passion they run out from under the cloth and blow away into dust. Some of the dust blows into our faces, I lick my lips but the dust has no taste. The wind blows harder. The box burried by the river falls from the sky and breaks at the hinge in plain view, and it spills our soda can tabs and worn shoe laces, some dead insects.
There seems to be a shadow under the tapestry, but the more we look the brighter it gets, and the brighter it gets the dryer it gets, so we all cast our eyes to the ground. Even the memory of ends fades, some harsh wind from eternity under the door. And someone gets it. They blow on their hand, and it shrivels almost to nothing, then with the same motion they breath in and the hand swells to youth, as they breath in and out their skin becomes mozaic, switching back and forth, growing and shriveling until settling into some mysterious skin of misunderstanding all their own. When we look we blur our vision, and we begin to remember, and to slip into storage lockers, files, vaults, but I call out to stay, and we all sit after everything is gone in the middle of a world of gray dust, with out new skin blowing to it’s own whims. The river is dry, but we don’t disappear. One of us sings a fruit into their hand and throws in into the dust, and from there we tell the seed story into a tree. That night we make a pact, and begin by looking for any other survivors, and remembering into bags with holes in their bottoms.