Reticent Rain, Page 3
Richard Acosta
-heard you stretching out my name
-is it anesthesia or just the pain
-see you reaching through my eyes
-hypodermic; pity in disguise
Little chapels give way to wind
Little chapels burned away yet again (that's why you're so shy?)
Will you call my name...
-heard you stretching out my name
-is it heat from embers or just the rain
-see you feasting; widowed cry
-only promises kept for the big lie
Little chapels give way to wind
Little chapels burned away yet again (that's why you're so shy?)
Will you call my name...
-heard you stretching out my name
-is it sanctity or am I insane
-feel you reaching through the sky
-momentary lapse of time
Little chapels give way to wind
Little chapels burned away yet again (that's why you're so shy?)
Will you call my name...
Axis VII
“An acorn from the oak begins to ripen just before its transit through the stars.”
I remember the first days that I had laid eyes upon the brightness; I mean really gaze upon that marvelous orb surrounding us with warmth and light. Caressing and browning our northwest skin to a light crisp. The spring rain had finally died out to let us kids get a break from the constant drench of the dreary grey sky above. My older brother and I always had to tromp through the giant lagoons of rain that would swallow the compacted dirt roads whole. We became grade school foot soldiers trudging through the muck with our rucksacks filled to the brim with books and composition notebooks. Our canvas hi-tops never made it more than a season before the cheap glue would give way from the constant six month downpour. And it was my brother who would always purposely march through the roads riverbed to accumulate as much water inside of his shoes. He especially loved the expressions on his fellow classmates as they caught a whiff of the sewer dog smell emanating from his shoes when he had settled into class.
It happened to be the last week of school and we were welcoming that thing called the sun with open arms. It was filtering through all of the maples and mighty oaks in our neighborhood. The bright warm morning light wreaked havoc on our eyes because of the time of year, in this part of the Northwest, we are all too accustomed to the grey pastiche of clouds subduing any form of visible light. Everything that was life to us was typically illuminated as a grey scale Frankenheimer film noir.
We took our time this morning whereas before we would sprint the nearly three quarters of a mile to school just to escape having seasonal trench foot. The air was so pure and filled with oxygen this morning that our minds became sharpened to any out of place nuance. The trees that we walked amongst were such a vivid Crayola green and the sky was a surreal cloudless Technicolor blue. The dirt of the road was as dark and rich as finely crushed coal briquettes. The sun just illuminated everything we had failed to notice before.
Even I and my brother looked out of place in the sun. Both of us had on crisp pairs of ironed blue jeans and perfect button down plaid shirts over the whitest t shirts my mom could prepare for us. I was so accustomed to wearing whatever she set out for us in the mornings that I never thought to even part my hair to the side just to give my look any individual personality. I mean we were her soldiers and she had molded us since the day we were born. But my brother on the other hand was the insolent one by insisting he at least wear his hair with grease like his hero Dean of which had just released Rebel a week or so ago. My brother would even rip off his neatly starched shirt that my mother had forced him to wear and put it crumpled into his school bag completing the look of his greaser uniform.
On our walk this day, every now and again, my older brother would punch me in the arm and then bolt into full on sprint just to see if I would cower in his absence. He was a menace not only to me but those that kept his company. The grease was alcohol to his actions, making him into an ever increasing bully from day to day. Nobody really liked him at home or at school due to his unkempt bravado. He never minded any of his actions and was callous at any hint of having any sort of real friend. He was a true rebel and a true loner. Him being older and in one grade above me didn’t help my situation any better either. It was even worse this year because this was the end of his run at grade school as he was moving on to the glory of junior high school. The constant turmoil he brought to all of us gave us reason to believe he had been comically switched at birth with that of a sibling from a travelling circus family. “The ape had run amok!” my dad would tease sometimes at the dinner table as my brother would sometimes feel slightly rambunctious, tearing apart our many boring meals. My father never disciplined his actions and they multiplied as a result.
I never wavered in my cadence though today even with the rucksack weighing me down so hard to the ground. I wanted to enjoy the day of sun that I was not accustomed to seeing and nothing could take me away from its splendor, not even my obnoxious brother. The blanket of warmth I felt was like a baby’s first breath. It was like that crisp gentle heat from our wood burning stove we could feel while waking up late on Saturday mornings. I slowed to a snail’s pace as my brother raced ahead of me while I took in all the glory of the morning’s rays. He ran just past an opening of a wide open cutoff where the trees diverged into three different paths.
As I walked towards the cutoff I came to notice the finger like shadows that casted through the trees all seemed to point in a different direction than it should have. I mean the sun had always risen from the east and, to go to school, we had to walk due west through the sporadically populated grove of trees which would mean the sun was always to our backs. But, when I got my bearings straight, I did notice that the sun was in fact rising northeast today which would signal the opening to the northwest fall. My southwest shadow crawled as I walked along the crushed coal dirt road and this gave me sudden inspiration.
I stopped and dropped my bag and pulled out my red wide ruled marbled composition book. It was my camera to the world at large. I couldn’t draw very well, so mostly I would do the best stick figure etchings I could render at the moment. I fuddled through the pages past the drawings of airplanes and rockets and found a blank slate to draw on. On the top of the page I put “end of school” and then I drew a big box with four squares. In each individual square I put myself as a stick figure right in the center of each square; a circle for a head with a vertical line sprouting down and four angled appendages coming from the vertical line. In the upper square on the left I put a sun in the middle on the far right of the square and attached to the left side of the box I drew a vertical line representing my shadow. I labeled the box “Points West”. With the upper right box I did the same only I put the sun over my right shoulder with the shadow angled south with the label “Points SW”. But before I could finish the other squares, my brother had sneaked up and knocked my book to the ground and quickly darted off again in retreat.
I wasn’t having it this time. His bullying ruined my new day of light and now I was dead set on ruining his torment. Even though he was much older and bigger than me I felt like today was my day to give him a taste of his own medicine. All of these empty untested years had built up to this moment as I ran full sprint towards him. My teeth chattered and clicked as I inched closer to his heels. The adrenaline surged in me and finally, in one fell swoop, I sprung on top of him like a cheetah dragging down a gazelle. He fell hard to the ground laughing at my moment’s bravery. But the power of my brother came into play and just then, in my short lived revelry, he had reversed my pounce and exacted a pin maneuver on me. My face and torso ate and spat the dirt that he had flipped me onto all the while extending my left arm backwards to the point of torn cartilage. My screams echoed among the trees as he ever so slightly began to twist my arm from the wrist. The bones began to collide and crunch under the pressure of the twist. I could hear my heart beating like a steel drum gett
ing louder and louder over all of my crying. My brother’s arm began twitching from the torque he was exerting on my arm and for leverage he placed his right foot on the back of my head.
“Feels good, huh.” He muttered close in my ear. “That’ll teach you to ever think about trying to overpower me again.” My brother made sure to talk straight down into my ear because I was crying out so loud in excruciating pain. He wanted to make certain I understood what he said.
“Now that wasn’t very nice!” A girl’s voice hovered over my screams off in the distance.
Then it gave way like the snapping of a tree limb; the bones and cartilage. The needles of pain rushed down as he dropped my limp appendage to the ground. My arm sat overstretched to its natural state by the side of my torso. The needles dissipated into numbness and my arm was beginning to take on a dark plumb color as the bruising was quickly setting in.
“This is none of your business!” My brother exclaimed.
“It is when it’s on our property.”
“Says who.”
“Says me!”
The pounding drums began to die down and I heard the sound of a bubbling creek off from where she had cried out fade into my ears.
“Stay out of it!” My brother cried out one last plea.
I managed to lift my head from under my brother’s shoe and saw that we had veered way off from the main road to the school. Both of us were at a bulb shaped clearing of some long unused and overgrown trail. There was a wide brook that was mere inches from the top of my head. I couldn’t see much because the sunlight was reflecting off of the tranquil water right into my eyes. I could make out her gaunt silhouette though as the radiant light wavered on my face.
“I think its best you guys turn around and continue on to school.” She calmly tried to reason with my brother.
My brother now took his foot off of me completely and I began to rise from where I was planted in the earth. I used my right arm to hobble and hoist myself up. Now I could get a good look at our surroundings. I subdued the light by placing my straight right hand to my brow. Across the brook I could see a beautifully manicured lawn surrounding a large glass enclosed sunroom. The thick overgrowth of trees covered the Victorian styled house that the room was jutting out from and the brook just curved to the left hugging the lawn until it too was swallowed by the overgrowth.
There she was standing on the edge of the lawn. The sun haloed her as it beamed from behind her body. She was a pale stick figure with straight brunette hair that ran down to her knees covering her entire contour with the face of Anna Pier-Angeli. She appeared to be the same age as me.
My arm at this point was starting to get warm as the blood began filling in every broken crevice of my extended appendage. The bruising was setting in pretty quick and overtook what was left of my limp arm.
“I don’t think your very smart to test me little girl. In fact I will show you the price you’ll pay.” My brother interrupted my gaze.
“It’s time for you guys to go and be on your…” she was screaming but stopped as her eyes got bigger.
My brother began turning his attention to the depths of the brook as she tried to get her one last plea but, from that point on, all I could concentrate on was her eyes. They became an iridescent blue as light from the surface of the brook shimmered into them. As he was scanning the brook, her pupils shrank and condensed as more and more light had tried to enter into them. The infinite blackness collapsed into a pinpoint. She was still trying to make a plea with the both of us but all I could notice was that her eyelids had now become connected with her brow. She had a wide eyed stare at the stance of my brother; a pitcher’s stance with that of a dense rock in his right hand. I read the fear in her eyes as she must have foreseen what was about to happen to her.
