In the Dusk Where Mortals Play

As my aunt lies upon her bed, pale and fragile...

 

The summer sun walks heavily through the sky. A taste of charcoal fire permeates the deep, humid air, and my breath wrestles the wind in this wet heat.

     Up in her room my aunt lies upon her bed, pale and fragile. Even in her mortality there rests a graying grace.  Her ancient eyes once awaited the walls of this home as it was birthed so many seasons past.  Now its eyes await her dying dust with penetrating patience.  Setting aside her tray of food, I turn to exit as she gasps for another breath.  Frosted feather dust lines the cracked window pane, and I hear her feeble voice. “When does life become obsolete?”  I stand in subtle silence then slowly turn toward her aging frame.

     “Young man,” she coughs.  I gaze into her clouded gray eyes, nearly blind.

     “Do you need something, Ma’am?  Something to drink?”  I ask.  With this she claws at the sheets to support herself.

     “What I need, you cannot give me.  It is a gift that slips from me even now.”

     “A gift?”  My eyes rove and roam her chamber. She finally lifts herself to speak.

 

“Life is a gift

that no one can earn.

Though wasted or treasured

the proud humbly learn,

that nothing can halt

our future demise;

the fear of the Lord

will open our eyes.”

 

     At her words I step forward and speak. 

 

“My brother was born with a dream;

a song to move his feet.

And I was given a broom,

to clean where he strides the street.

Will Providence ever prevail

to turn the tide of the scale?”

 

     She rises as if renewed by a quickening daydream, and now speaks.  “Listen... oh, listen… Do you hear the spider weaving her webs?  Can you feel the joy of the Lark, or smell the fragrance of drifting pollen, or view the cresting waters on every earthly shore?  These things endure every day as we wander.  Even now their sounds and scents fill the earth.  Every moment...” she coughs and pauses to take a breath.  “Every moment of an ordinary day is full of wonderment, for the common is only a cloaked disguise of the divine.”  She lays back in a temporary taste of torment, then continues as her body shakes.

     “We live as emotional transients in a world of isolation.  Oh, if I could only borrow back so many wasted moments, but only the arrogant have no regrets; so much is paid for with borrowed time.

 

The infant road,

the child’s path,

in the rising tide of the day,

is the aged road

the dying path,

in the dusk where mortals play.”

 

     My aunt stops, then rises painfully and deliberately.  “I hope you have listened well to the learning words of a dying lady.”

     I step toward her feeble frame with anxious anger.  “May I say with no disrespect that I am my own tutor and mentor.  I am my own critic and judge.  I’ll weigh your words on my spirit’s scales.”

     “Beware that you don’t become self-infested, my dear one.  The bleating self is the soul’s demise; more a hindrance than an emancipator,” she says. “Your iconoclastic thunders may one day ring hollow.”

     Stinging fumes of wind breathe through her window and burn my throat, as I turn from her musty presence.

     Her voice in whispers speaks again.  “My life’s window is darkening each day.  Maybe one more day of living liberty, then you shall see your auntie no more in this frail frame.”  Her body slips back limply on her sheets and her gray eyes close in pausing pain as her body trembles.  Her tongue tries to taste her thirsting lips.

     With pity at the sight of her, as weak as a dying dog, I approach her now weeping and try to speak.  “What liberty is there in second-hand independence? No indelible mark is etched in the heart of a bird never caged. My gluttonous eyes would devour the world, and savor even the barren bones, yet I’ve been stranded in this pining place with no hope of flight.  Can you grant me any light to end this darking night?” 

            “And yet,” she whispers.  “And yet my flight is eerily imminent, though I am ready.

 

Pale and clouded, lying motionless;

winter’s fury, summer’s flame.

Faded faces, speaking shrilly,

wrestling, stalking in my mind.

Rising, weeping in a corner;

laughing, racing in a field.

Still and stable, screeching silence;

crawling age and creeping years.

I stand on winter’s crippling strand,

staring and shaking by the sight

of embering photos in a drawer,

bathed in memory’s dying dust.

And yet this moment I have peace,

for hope is seared inside my soul.”

 

     In a muted moment she drifts into a soundless sleep, and with the stinging echo of her words I turn and exit her darkened room, returning to the grating light of the porch; a light that pierces even to my bones.

 

Reviews

[emmajoy]

What a beautifully written, wonderful tale. It's like a myth, one told by an open fire, where people sit, listening to the wisest sage amongst them.

There's such wisdom in your tale: a display of arrogant sadness by the man given a broom but yet, knows it all: "May I say with no disrespect that I am my own tutor and mentor" .. .. the aunt's long-lived life and the knowledge she's gained through it as she passes into the winter of her days. 'I stand on winter's crippling strand,'

Not only is your prose smooth-sweet but so is your poetry.. you're very skilled in whatever you do.

Read it again. There's so much guidance here that it's probably best to come back and read this post a third and fourth time. Can only trust the nephew learned a true lesson as he closed the door behind him.

Thank you for sharing.

(Brother's comments ... great piece of writing: ' I stand on winter�s crippling strand, staring and shaking by the sight of embering photos in a drawer, bathed in memory�s dying dust ' Almost eastern in style and suggestion. The writer really knows his business.)

[We are young.]

For firsts I must say your choice of words is amazing! and this story was great

[Stephanie]

This makes me think of an old ghost story, but different. It's got all the story-telling aspects and the colliquial (I think thats the word) languauge of a cool ghost story, but the wisdom of an old Native tale. This had so much knowledge and words to live by. Pretty cool! This was a great piece, as usual :]

[Samuel Dickens]

Elegant in it's telling, insightful, wise and moving in content, I think this is my favorite piece I've seen of yours.