The Map Of Your Hands Unfolds A DoveBy Vikki C.
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We cross the rubicon knowing the hourglass can never be turned. Its sands are finer too, for better or worse. Sands from dunes we believed were almost paradise. Now the rains rebel in excess. Another temporal mood swing they naturally blame on women.
Things appear unfamiliar by duskfall, distorted by neon and vignettes. Our toes, ballerina-like, barely feel the ground or river bed. We speculate whether they still exist or if our senses are simply confused. Men question their faith, longing to walk on water, or just be bound to a floating cross. I comfort my daughter, saying this is Swan Lake as we cling to mangled driftwood, the air thick with the stench of rotting sugar cane and unidentifiable flora even scavengers won't touch. There are only a handful of days left. Just as there are morsels of grain. Paddy fields are now submerged. Green below, monochrome above. Water has taken back its birthright, leaving us no choice but to give thanks for the silver shoals still weaving between our failing limbs. We try to catch a few with our bare hands. But they escape, slivers of light too thin to be held – unintended for human consumption.
***
How do I tell her the calendar was a farce? A mere distraction. That time has purposefully swallowed the last tugboat which was painted teal – her once favourite colour. Now everything is flotsam, the shape of necessity. Brown debris in grey waters. She holds onto me and gazes out into the passing hours, where seeing seems less important these days. This is the moment a mother's courage comes. Like the exit music to a film. Guiding the exhilarated but exhausted audience. A soft landing is all they pray for. Silt, even salt. Her helpless body, a letter watermarked by trust.
***
There are missions which defy purpose. The way art ensues in chaos. A stranger leaves it behind in their own escape. The broken piano in a river is not an illusion. Just a bittersweet substitute for a boat, cradling what I have become. I am playing by heart the way she does, not sight-reading, too stubborn to follow notation, even if she could. Hours are shorter now, the evening cuts our bodies into quavers that slip between loss and consciousness. Old light pours through the ruins to the south, no stained glass remains, only an echo of the final recital before the church organ filled with water, pulled under with our faith. Some notes resurface, like a hallelujah whenever disaster is imminent, music saving us. For now.
***
What seems like two days have lapsed. The etude of our bitter lives has stretched into a magnum opus. Epic, unsettling. Time quickly turns even the young into sceptics. She's pulling at my clothes now as she realises the land is altered, her home, distant. She is curious why there is no clatter of cutlery and plates on tables. Only my trembling hand bringing bland milk to her blue lips. Just my breath and the ebb of what we cannot live without. She is sick of unknowing. I am sick of keeping it all afloat.
Her father has disappeared with the last rescue boats. I tell her I loved the hero of our story. The one that always has to leave. She thinks it makes no difference. He was clinging to the solitary birch in secret. Its silver skin somehow hypnotic against the greyscale dimensions. I lied to save myself too. "Women who prey on men at the end of the world must be senseless", she said once. I couldn't let her know and she would never see any mistress, at worst, just hear her wild gasps and smell her perfume of watered down decaying flora– the perfect camouflage in this pariah ecosystem. She would never tell my sins and his apart.
She tugs me harder and I remember my selfish acts. Two hours of freedom conferred by the early violin lessons in the lane full of cherry blossoms. How the blooms framed her smallness with a sense of spring. But she was reluctant to go into the teacher's home. She held onto my arm, her bag swinging recklessly, books and handwritten notes spilling out – mockingly. The same desperation as now.
***
By the onset of the monsoon, I had lost sight of it all too. The boulevard and its grand homes, gardens and aspirations have gone under now. We are in a place and time where road names, cities, countries do not matter. It simply rains like the wettest place on earth - Mawsynram, India – where the villagers soundproof their homes from the deafening pounding of rain. The place you've never been but know how quiet it sounds when the rain ceases. When all the heartbeats of loved ones, once loudly thrumming, fall silent. I now see what she has seen for months - a cool curtain of darkness. I lost my awe in the swell. Still, I paddled. And Satie plays on, the turntable catching a glint of unknown light. The shiver of the record player's needle against my spine numbs the pain of what came before. Musical epidurals - we don't fight the gods that administer them. They drown out the relentless chaos – the falling of rain and empires.
Frosted air is suspended above the last roofless pillars. We imagine the exquisite ceiling frescoes, their colours glistening above as we once lay supine, waiting for something like love. Now architectures and blueprints are dissolving. Like the closing scene of a surreal art house movie. An exhale of pastels and satori, expelling all preceding philosophies.
This is the womb we return to – unseeing, unknowing. Water in all its states, holding me from both sides. My daughter's hands unfold like braille to my fingers, and suddenly I feel the lucidity. The only word that ever mattered, diverting our eyes above this storm-struck prosody. We catch the lost feather, never the dove. Against the languid horizon, a moment of calm, brief and white. Its perfect milky image – already leaving us behind.
END
Things appear unfamiliar by duskfall, distorted by neon and vignettes. Our toes, ballerina-like, barely feel the ground or river bed. We speculate whether they still exist or if our senses are simply confused. Men question their faith, longing to walk on water, or just be bound to a floating cross. I comfort my daughter, saying this is Swan Lake as we cling to mangled driftwood, the air thick with the stench of rotting sugar cane and unidentifiable flora even scavengers won't touch. There are only a handful of days left. Just as there are morsels of grain. Paddy fields are now submerged. Green below, monochrome above. Water has taken back its birthright, leaving us no choice but to give thanks for the silver shoals still weaving between our failing limbs. We try to catch a few with our bare hands. But they escape, slivers of light too thin to be held – unintended for human consumption.
***
How do I tell her the calendar was a farce? A mere distraction. That time has purposefully swallowed the last tugboat which was painted teal – her once favourite colour. Now everything is flotsam, the shape of necessity. Brown debris in grey waters. She holds onto me and gazes out into the passing hours, where seeing seems less important these days. This is the moment a mother's courage comes. Like the exit music to a film. Guiding the exhilarated but exhausted audience. A soft landing is all they pray for. Silt, even salt. Her helpless body, a letter watermarked by trust.
***
There are missions which defy purpose. The way art ensues in chaos. A stranger leaves it behind in their own escape. The broken piano in a river is not an illusion. Just a bittersweet substitute for a boat, cradling what I have become. I am playing by heart the way she does, not sight-reading, too stubborn to follow notation, even if she could. Hours are shorter now, the evening cuts our bodies into quavers that slip between loss and consciousness. Old light pours through the ruins to the south, no stained glass remains, only an echo of the final recital before the church organ filled with water, pulled under with our faith. Some notes resurface, like a hallelujah whenever disaster is imminent, music saving us. For now.
***
What seems like two days have lapsed. The etude of our bitter lives has stretched into a magnum opus. Epic, unsettling. Time quickly turns even the young into sceptics. She's pulling at my clothes now as she realises the land is altered, her home, distant. She is curious why there is no clatter of cutlery and plates on tables. Only my trembling hand bringing bland milk to her blue lips. Just my breath and the ebb of what we cannot live without. She is sick of unknowing. I am sick of keeping it all afloat.
Her father has disappeared with the last rescue boats. I tell her I loved the hero of our story. The one that always has to leave. She thinks it makes no difference. He was clinging to the solitary birch in secret. Its silver skin somehow hypnotic against the greyscale dimensions. I lied to save myself too. "Women who prey on men at the end of the world must be senseless", she said once. I couldn't let her know and she would never see any mistress, at worst, just hear her wild gasps and smell her perfume of watered down decaying flora– the perfect camouflage in this pariah ecosystem. She would never tell my sins and his apart.
She tugs me harder and I remember my selfish acts. Two hours of freedom conferred by the early violin lessons in the lane full of cherry blossoms. How the blooms framed her smallness with a sense of spring. But she was reluctant to go into the teacher's home. She held onto my arm, her bag swinging recklessly, books and handwritten notes spilling out – mockingly. The same desperation as now.
***
By the onset of the monsoon, I had lost sight of it all too. The boulevard and its grand homes, gardens and aspirations have gone under now. We are in a place and time where road names, cities, countries do not matter. It simply rains like the wettest place on earth - Mawsynram, India – where the villagers soundproof their homes from the deafening pounding of rain. The place you've never been but know how quiet it sounds when the rain ceases. When all the heartbeats of loved ones, once loudly thrumming, fall silent. I now see what she has seen for months - a cool curtain of darkness. I lost my awe in the swell. Still, I paddled. And Satie plays on, the turntable catching a glint of unknown light. The shiver of the record player's needle against my spine numbs the pain of what came before. Musical epidurals - we don't fight the gods that administer them. They drown out the relentless chaos – the falling of rain and empires.
Frosted air is suspended above the last roofless pillars. We imagine the exquisite ceiling frescoes, their colours glistening above as we once lay supine, waiting for something like love. Now architectures and blueprints are dissolving. Like the closing scene of a surreal art house movie. An exhale of pastels and satori, expelling all preceding philosophies.
This is the womb we return to – unseeing, unknowing. Water in all its states, holding me from both sides. My daughter's hands unfold like braille to my fingers, and suddenly I feel the lucidity. The only word that ever mattered, diverting our eyes above this storm-struck prosody. We catch the lost feather, never the dove. Against the languid horizon, a moment of calm, brief and white. Its perfect milky image – already leaving us behind.
END
Vikki C. is a British-born author, poet and musician whose work is inspired by science, existentialism and the human condition. Her collection 'The Art Of Glass Houses' (Alien Buddha Press), explores the liminal landscapes of memory, place, art and the human experience. Vikki's prose and poetry is widely published in places such as Ellipsis Zine, EcoTheo Review, Acropolis Journal, Black Bough Poetry, Loft Books, Across The Margin, Literary Revelations, DarkWinter Literary Magazine and elsewhere.