Love it Back to Life - Vintage Fiction 2008

and bring it back to the Cafe...

"Tell me again how it was, Mom." Sasha crouched in the middle of the street, dirty hands tucked under her armpits as she shivered in the frigid air. Her matted brown hair hung in limp tendrils around her face. "Before the fall?" The little girl's voice on the silent streets was like a serenade of moments remembered only when furtive sleep allowed them escape from the chaos their world had become.

"I'm not sure I can remember." Hot tears cascaded down Giselle's face as she knelt beside her freezing child. "My mind tends only to focus on finding us food, and shelter from the cold nights. All the less lucrative thoughts are pushed out by the things we do to survive." 

"Come on. One more time, please?" The little girls eyes glowed like two jade moons as she stared off into the distance. 

And so it starts my precious child. The wild animal in your eyes wants out and when the madness comes....I will lose you, and your innocence...

"Honey, don't look at them anymore. We can't bring them back. I'll tell you again if you promise only to look at me." Giselle grabbed her daughter's gaunt face in her own icy hands, breaking the child's eyes from their locked stare. She closed her own wildflower blue eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the horror of the dozens of white sheets that littered the street and sidewalks. Friends and strangers covered where they lay, mute reminders of lives lost. She was running out of sheets, and out of time. 

"I know, but sometimes the wind blows and the sheets move and I think, well I think somebody might still be alive.I believe they could be just sleeping." Sasha's thin voice bounced back at the two from the cement walls of the abandoned building they used to call home. 

"Somebody is alive. You and I are alive. We can't bring them back, honey. But I won't let the abyss have you. Here, put this on." Giselle removed a ragged jacket from her shoulders. Tucking it around her little girl, she stopped for a moment and held her daughter fiercely against her. She allowed the tears to fall again as she felt her daughters small arms wrap around her neck. Like opium, her daughter's embrace enveloped her senses, and for a moment she felt the rush of life through her veins and her soul. 

"Just tell me again, Mommy about something beautiful." Sasha pulled away suddenly. She stuck her hands in the pockets of the old jacket and extracted a withered chrysanthemum. "Tell me the color this flower was. It can't remember, so you have to do it." Sasha's eyes glowed in the twilight and she smiled, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. "Please. Before time goes away." Her daughter's plaintive demand echoed in her ears. 

"Ok baby." Giselle closed her eyes.

Please, God. I can't do this. I can't watch my baby die....not like all the others. "It was crimson. Vivid crimson." 

"Like blood." Sasha whispered.

"Yes, like blood. Like that red lipstick I used to wear. You know the lipstick that your daddy said seduced him into marrying me." Giselle squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

"And the leaves." Sasha's breath was warm against her mother's cheek. "Tell me about the leaves." 

"Honey, they were green like your eyes, and they smelled like summer playgrounds, Oh Sasha!" Giselle grabbed her daughter and squeezed her hard "Don't leave me! I love you." 

"I know, but you're crushing my flower." Sasha squirmed away from her mother's grip. "Look." 

"Honey, its not a flower anymore. Its just a memory of something that was alive." 

"Yes, it is a flower." 

Giselle looked down at the chrysanthemum that rested in her daughter's hands. Blood red petals burst from a slender green stem, and Giselle could smell the scent of summer welling up from the bloom. 

"Honey! Where did you get that flower?" 

"From your pocket, mom." 

"But that flower was dead." 

"I know. But now it isn't. I wanted to give you something, Mom. So I loved this flower back to life." Sasha's eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed as she smiled at her mother. "We can love it all back to life." 

Giselle felt her daughter's body grow warm as she held her tightly, her daughters voice repeating over and over "we can love it all back to life". 
 

TL Boehm 020808  

Author's Note

another bit of fiction - exposing my mushy core.

Reviews

[icelandicblue]

What a beautiful image and thought to love something back to life. Love is life and perhaps we can truly "breathe" it in to someone else and watch the color come back. This piece has beautiful and touching dialogue and the ending was tear worthy. Brava Tammy!

[TL Boehm]

Thank you so much. sometimes I read it and get sappy and sometimes I read it and go Pfuhhh.

[icelandicblue]

I just read it again and teared up.

[TL Boehm]

Oh thank you. You’re too kind

[Einstein Noodle]

wow! eerily prophetic, TL! pandemic dead piling up around the world. :( i think the imaging, scene and characters are strong. I easily picture it playing out. Just a few minutes between mother and daughter in dim cold light and surroundings .. your call to bring things back to life with love is dynamite says i! it's what have need, have needed and always will need to bring out lives to life ... not mushy ... emotive, strong social commentary, strong setting and scene in a very short chapter .. easy to imagine sevral scenarios that brought Sasha and Giselle to their "moment" ..
E.

[TL Boehm]

Thank you. Seems like forever ago when I wrote this

[Einstein Noodle]

well....7 yrs is kind of long time i'd say .. be well and stay safe. glad you back visiting the Cafe' ...

[Patricia Wedel]

dearest Tammy... “we can love it back to life” is so poignantly beautiful and generous. It has touched upon my tender tendrils of empathy wherein my tears are frozen in time. gently, Pat

[TL Boehm]

Thank you so much.

[C. Rose]

Spooky! I liked wildflower blue, and opium, running out of sheets, wind moving the sheets. I love stories that use a "tell me about 'before the fall'". We don't need to know the cause of the tragedy because you are focusing on the aftermath and hope.

The point you end the story on, focuses on the positivity of the child surviving, but being a mainly sci-fi lover I think of the repercussions of a child necromancer in an apocalyptic zone.

The attention to color works great in the gloomy 'after the fall' set.

[TL Boehm]

Thank you so muxh

[TL Boehm]

Thank you so much - my phone is unruly tonight - thus the spelling error.

[Stanley R. Teater]

Mush can be good. I really enjoyed the story.

[S.Diane.L.]

This was both heart warming and tearful. You really captured the essence of a mother and her child. Well done!

[TL Boehm]

thank you so much

[Taylor]

We need so much more love in the world and this story is such an expression in many ways for me of today's world. It is the hope of just one little candle lighting the whole world. I do believe that things can be loved back to life; I've seen people loved back to life (not literally, though perhaps that is possible when people linger at the brink of death -- I don't know) but certainly figuratively. For me the story moved very well, held interest -- as a reader I could see the desolation around the mother and child, almost feel the cold. Only several suggestions -- there are a couple of instances in which the mother's comments to the child use language beyond what one might expect -- "lucrative" and "seduced." The child you have created seems to be a bit young for either of those words (but that's just my ear and may not be accurate). I also would like to see the transformation of the child to be elongated slightly, not a lot. I know the transformation was sudden and you want the reader to know that; maybe what I'm looking for is a slower description of the actual transformation. I hope you will return to this story. It is very poignant and to me feels current.

[TL Boehm]

Thank you Taylor. At the time this was written I belonged to a small writing group and those words you mentioned may have even been a word list challenge wherein we were prompted by a picture and expected to use a specific list of words in the poem or story. I think Chrysanthemum was a word on the list as well - but your suggestion is great - I never thought of that because the little girl is young. As for stretching the story out a bit - never thought of that either but that would be a good idea.

[richieb]

Excellent dialogue surrounded by a very dark situation. Your descriptions between dialogues is very polished and professional. I enjoyed this story and want to read more. Richie B.

[TL Boehm]

thank you so much. Its been awhile since I've written fiction. I miss it.

[MFrano1]

I love it. In just a few short paragraphs, you manage to send people on a whirlwind of emotions, starting at curious, going to saddened, and ending at relieved and oddly content. It was a great ending, with some powerful lines.

[TL Boehm]

thank you so much for reading@

[emmajoy]

Fine, you've made me cry and I don't care a jot. How wonderfully innocent yet compelling your words are, start to finish. For me, there is nothing more beautiful than real love for someone.. it makes life mean more than breath, more than dawn and hugs spirits into beautiful dreams.

Whatever words used for dialogue in your story - not mushy at all, they have true heart and that ending.. oh my, that ending makes today very precious. Thank you.

[TL Boehm]

thank you so much!

[B.J]

Beautiful lovely flow and certainly shows your mushy side as you put it. I enjoyed reading it reminded me of my Mum and how she felt about life and love.

[TL Boehm]

thank you. I do have a mushy side. I try to keep it under control. :)

[B.J]

:)....................... we all do don't worry