Cutlass Rd.
We had no water. That was it. There was no water. It had been a month at least. An extra month of dry season. We weren’t prepared. We couldn’t be. Because it was impossible.
The colony had to risk the night march to gather water at the hair of the broom. Councils held in our dry chambers that now smelled of burnt wood and sand. Our chambers, that once had smelled of mud and rootflesh and sap. Heat pounded out of the chamber’s walls now, out of its ground, a pulse of insomnia, drowning out the words of the council.
Violet, do you know what it was like? Have you? Violet, there was so much terror before. The colony tangled at the mouth in a living flame because we were all so scared of the march. Tearing a hole through them just to get out. Elders had spoken in the councils from memory of this march, from in their youth. Violence, violence that heralded only more violence. But we had no water and we had to go. I remember getting through the chaos of the mouth, cutting and pressing my way through, body pieces everywhere, alive pieces hanging from the rootwoven ceiling, alive pieces carpeting our ground. A world in the negative. I was climbing through something that didn’t exist. I gave up breathing. And then I was outside. Outside. And the night air went through me. It was like love. Because I knew I wasn’t dead. Instantly. It collapsed me, it distorted my map inside, like when I first met you, it breathed me … and for the longest time I was so disoriented I had to just follow the movement of those in the lead. This air stunned me. Its beauty. The night air. The moonlight. Because we’d had no water for so long, every thing, every feeling, was one of either drinking or thirst. Everything was a hope of quenching: objects, wind, sounds, thoughts, feelings, desire … everything was related to thirst. Drinking, wetting, irrigating, moistening, sucking, dampening, licking, swallowing, lapping, gulping, squirting, bubbling. Parching. Being parched. Parched. Raw. Dessicated. Dryness. Layer against layer of dry. Layer fighting layer. Layer wounding layer. And yet the memory of each previous moment like the memory of a lake of rain. Scanning my limbs for sweat or dew. Sucking on myself, just to be sure.
There were tales of the queen that moved through the colony’s black vein. Told visions of her, mounted upon a dripping stone under a canopy of rain, huge black and shining and the embodiment of wetness itself. Her slaves about her catching her mist in their antennae and risking death as they stole into cells to suckle on them. Her stupendous size engorged not with our future colonists, but with water. Simple water. And yet there was no talk of spilling her. Of emptying her. Lancing. None at all. This image of her wetness ran through our river of fear and made us more dry, more in danger. I was completely disoriented. I drank the air, and it seemed to drink me as we marched through Cutlass Road. Cutlass Road, at night … And Violet, the world never seemed so beautiful as on that night on that march. The moonlight. My thirst, my thirst loved you. All the gallaxy hollowed out and alive with my need to drink. Somehow the water at the hair of the broom had become you. And the march, violent and sad, so sad … so many of the colony never made it to the broom. They stopped in their tracks and I saw them shatter into dust as I, we trampled them. Below us. But my march was a desperate march to you. It was you, my thirst for you that led me. I’d arrive and you’d appear and we’d touch and from our touch the river of the world would once more spring. The river of my thirst. That’s what we were, on march in the moonlight. A river of thirst. A moving river of thirst. And Cutlass Road made a silence itself. It absorbed all the sound of our marching, so that it was like we were marching deaf, a shadow of long deafness moving across the land. There were no attacks on the march, which is what most had been terrified of. No attacks. There were not even any warnings from periphery, from point or from rear. There was only silence and thirst and the eyes of those that gave out and were pressed as dust and ground as dust into the dust of Cutlass Road.
The colony had to risk the night march to gather water at the hair of the broom. Councils held in our dry chambers that now smelled of burnt wood and sand. Our chambers, that once had smelled of mud and rootflesh and sap. Heat pounded out of the chamber’s walls now, out of its ground, a pulse of insomnia, drowning out the words of the council.
Violet, do you know what it was like? Have you? Violet, there was so much terror before. The colony tangled at the mouth in a living flame because we were all so scared of the march. Tearing a hole through them just to get out. Elders had spoken in the councils from memory of this march, from in their youth. Violence, violence that heralded only more violence. But we had no water and we had to go. I remember getting through the chaos of the mouth, cutting and pressing my way through, body pieces everywhere, alive pieces hanging from the rootwoven ceiling, alive pieces carpeting our ground. A world in the negative. I was climbing through something that didn’t exist. I gave up breathing. And then I was outside. Outside. And the night air went through me. It was like love. Because I knew I wasn’t dead. Instantly. It collapsed me, it distorted my map inside, like when I first met you, it breathed me … and for the longest time I was so disoriented I had to just follow the movement of those in the lead. This air stunned me. Its beauty. The night air. The moonlight. Because we’d had no water for so long, every thing, every feeling, was one of either drinking or thirst. Everything was a hope of quenching: objects, wind, sounds, thoughts, feelings, desire … everything was related to thirst. Drinking, wetting, irrigating, moistening, sucking, dampening, licking, swallowing, lapping, gulping, squirting, bubbling. Parching. Being parched. Parched. Raw. Dessicated. Dryness. Layer against layer of dry. Layer fighting layer. Layer wounding layer. And yet the memory of each previous moment like the memory of a lake of rain. Scanning my limbs for sweat or dew. Sucking on myself, just to be sure.
There were tales of the queen that moved through the colony’s black vein. Told visions of her, mounted upon a dripping stone under a canopy of rain, huge black and shining and the embodiment of wetness itself. Her slaves about her catching her mist in their antennae and risking death as they stole into cells to suckle on them. Her stupendous size engorged not with our future colonists, but with water. Simple water. And yet there was no talk of spilling her. Of emptying her. Lancing. None at all. This image of her wetness ran through our river of fear and made us more dry, more in danger. I was completely disoriented. I drank the air, and it seemed to drink me as we marched through Cutlass Road. Cutlass Road, at night … And Violet, the world never seemed so beautiful as on that night on that march. The moonlight. My thirst, my thirst loved you. All the gallaxy hollowed out and alive with my need to drink. Somehow the water at the hair of the broom had become you. And the march, violent and sad, so sad … so many of the colony never made it to the broom. They stopped in their tracks and I saw them shatter into dust as I, we trampled them. Below us. But my march was a desperate march to you. It was you, my thirst for you that led me. I’d arrive and you’d appear and we’d touch and from our touch the river of the world would once more spring. The river of my thirst. That’s what we were, on march in the moonlight. A river of thirst. A moving river of thirst. And Cutlass Road made a silence itself. It absorbed all the sound of our marching, so that it was like we were marching deaf, a shadow of long deafness moving across the land. There were no attacks on the march, which is what most had been terrified of. No attacks. There were not even any warnings from periphery, from point or from rear. There was only silence and thirst and the eyes of those that gave out and were pressed as dust and ground as dust into the dust of Cutlass Road.
posted by J. Neptune at 9:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home