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

[therisa]

Sighing softly.

Eyes of the innocent
Who see wonder
Where others see
Nothing but death
And destruction.

Giving hope and love
A new lease
Upon live.

Thank you, Tammy, for writing this.

[TL Boehm]

Thank you so much dear. I do have a soft spot. I just keep it guarded.

[therisa]

Sadly, too many of us, have learnt this harsh lesson.

[Samuel Dickens]

Your mushy core is a lot like my mushy core. Such a dismal, hopeless scene. Death crept closer, had them in its grasp, and then---Love! Love changed it all! I like this idea a lot. Perhaps it is only in the naive mind of a child that such things happen, but I believe that when big folks "become as a child", miracles may also happen.

[TL Boehm]

thank you, Samuel. I was beginning to think this poor lonesome short was going to be consigned to the island of unread stories. I"m part berserker part pollyanna.

[Samuel Dickens]

I know it's frustrating. Well, I'm glad I found it.

[TL Boehm]

me too!