Season's Fall

He sat bedside to his mother, staring at the palms of his hands; studying the intricate lines as if they would return the answers beyond his 6 years of age. As his thoughts drew to a halt like an anchor drawn aboard, he lifted his heavy head to see the frail body before him. She lay ill and lit to a pale glow set off by the moonlight that poured through the large window. She breathed in slow and heavy, causing her chest to sink so each time it seemed that gravity itself was causing her body to collapse. Her chin slowly fell to her shoulder as her weighted eyelids lifted slightly that the pale-blue in them, that was once so brilliant and now dimming to grey, beamed into Ellom’s eyes.

Her finger moved slightly with infinitesimal strength, his heart leapt and caused his hand to touch hers as if to calm the movement to save her energy so he could keep her as long as possible. Her body swelled as she drew in a long breath, and the vibrations in her throat were prelude to the symphony of her voice. “Ellom." Ellom looked at her with wide with joy of her words, but full of fright that they would be her last. "You will be the man I always wanted to see in this world...." she drew in another breath, this time with a slight grimace that flashed across her face that she quickly threw off like a bird to a storm, so she could have this breath to speak to her son. "…because you are the son I always wanted."

With that a smile thinly curled across her sunken face like a cloud against the sky, and a tear slipped from her glistening blue eyes dispersing into the pillow. Ellom’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear its tumultuous beat in the dead silence that blanketed the moment. His mother's eyes began to close, their glisten now blotted out like the sun into the horizon, and her smile drew into their lips supple slumber.

Ellom's grip on her hand grew tight in his reflex to awaken his mom. She could not be gone. The unstoppable nightmare could not be now. His lips bore a tremble, as new tears began to heat his eyes and gradually rain the carpet he use to play on just years ago when he was small enough for her to pick him up and hold him and tell him how much she would always love him.

But 'always' came to end, and Ellom was alone. Sobbing, he buried his face into his mother's hand, for maybe it would rise to wipe his tears away. But when no movement answered his disparaged cry, he looked up onto her sunken face. A jolt of care, and promise that he'd always had for her grew out from within like new flame, and he felt the soul of valor and responsibility of a man take him over. Thoughts of how he would be that man right now, if her eyes would just open. He would take care of her and make her a happy woman. So he took in her beauty, and gave hope one more chance.

But her eyes did not open, and he was stricken with a sadness that broke him down into the crest of her neck crying so hard he hoped she could hear him from wherever her soul may be. The smell of her lotion still alive and still ten thousand graces to his senses, drew memories of all their embraces. All the times she made his days golden. Her touch on his cheek, the constant smile she wore when he was in the room, now darkened as the shadows that swallowed his fetal form.

Then he remembered he could not stay. He would make the phone call, and they would be here in the morning. He raised his head and looked at the old grandfather clock once more. It seemed to stand taller than ever. Brooding and foreboding as if it were Death itself. Time was ever against him; but he had to do what was necessary.

He wrote his mom a good-bye note coupled with the daisy he'd picked for her that day, and laid it on her shoulder. He set her hands folded in a calming form atop her chest as if to say she was ready and prepared to go where she has gone. He stood in a moment that seemed to slow with his heart's wane, just so he could have the last image of the greatest love he’d known with him indefinitely. He bowed down to grace her cheek one last time with a kiss. His lips lighted to her like a butterfly to a flower, and remained there for the longest they ever had. Still pressed he drew in a breath, and lifted himself from her; opening his eyes from the moment's last embrace and never letting her leave his sight. He took one step back then, as if taking a great leap from a cliff’s edge, turned from her and continued down the darkness of the hallway picking up his one satchel and walked out the door leaving the only place he had ever known into a world he did not.

Raising Castles

She slips into the evening with slight regard to the cooling air rolling off the sun's last sigh. The painted sky goes black hosting the family of stars that part whispering lights that seem to speak legends to her in silence. She's alone, but in good company. Curled on the sand with nothing but a wall of ancient stone behind her guarding her past, she looks head on into the blanket of darkened sea. Lost in thought as the folds of black waves crest into the moonlit white crashing to land as if a gentle giant pleading for her affection. But she was only drowned in her daydreams of the night. She rests her head to her knee and studies the prints in the sand. Forming stories from the indentions of relationships come and gone. Were they foretelling of her own imprint to give? Would she draw lines in the sand for the celestial bodies to conjure into lore? Would she go to the north or the south on this shore? Or will it be into the ocean to see what lies beyond all this, if there is something untold she could adore? The mystery weighted like a shadow pressing the light. She bit her lip in anticipation, as the thought grew to a move. She knew to find out where she would go, she had to take a foot forward, and discover what she had never known.

Elysian Fields - (Excerpt)

He felt the wet sensation of cold hit his lips as it's gentle smear spread through their crevice, and the sweet flavor of something unknown breached to the tip of his tongue. Raising from unconsciousness clouded his rationale, and so his first thoughts were that his daughter was playing with him, with possibly something she had concocted from the kitchen. She was always able to reach everything beyond her limitations of 3 feet high. The thought grew to a dead end, as he opened his eyes and saw before him and endless world of white and sculpted blue. Cold. Flakes of snow gradually fell illustrating silence upon stillness.


He pressed himself from the frozen ground which he realized was but an aged wooden platform; the only iceless surface from what he could see. He took hesitation as he grew curious of what could be awaiting his arrival here. Though the cold wasteland he saw before him was not inviting, nor was notably comfortable, still felt more like company than the drafty shod of a house in which he had spent his last days. At least this was something that seemed to stand out from the rest of the world he had always known. It almost felt as if it were manifested for him. Now as the air began to shift into a wind, his bare arms felt the sting of the land's wintery hand. He trudged on only guided in hope that destiny would answer.


Just ahead was a forest naked of spring, but full of winding limbs and branches spiraling into each other sheltering the ground below from the ambient glow of the grey-clouded sky. On it's edge was the hint of a forking path. Options he did not have time for, to wager his weight of wisdom that would be nothing more than a guessing game at this point.


He turned to look behind, and nothing but the lone wooden platform that might as well have been drift wood that brought him from a misty sea to a frozen hand of dismal deed lied in his sight. Beyond it nothing but white. He turned back and for the first time the forest seemed to offer a proposition. So he walked to it's edge and without hesitation knowing his time was short let whatever foot that led to the forests' edge first be the fork of the path he took.


Aimless, knowing no such thing of North, South, East, or West here. He picked up his pace down the left fork feeling this path now had to be right. Not knowing why the other path would even be wrong but it was for the first time, he felt a nod of fate's concurrence reside warmly in his conscience as an ember growing into flame.


Darkening, the deeper he stabbed onward into the belly of this lifeless forest. Swiftly on the tracks of this winding trail he ran, making sure not to trip on the large knotty roots that suffocated the path from both sides. Not knowing what lied ahead he could only for at the very least hope for the sound of someone's presence. Just then was a crack was heard in the distance, which jolted him to a halt. As he stood still, he felt the sensation of perspiration elate his skin with a chill but was quickly defeated by the heat of his body that had been churned from his hasting pace. Through his deep breaths he listened intently as a hare in full alert, attempting to decipher if the sound was him, something foreign, or just in his mind all together. Taking one deep inhale to quite his body, he hoped for another sound.


Nothing.


He propelled back into his previous stride and the first sense of loss fell darkly in his mind. He began to ask why he was here. What has this world to do with anything about him. The previous two were strange enough, but at least they had presented misfit children to tell him of his misfortunate past. The other but an aimless oaf that talked in nothing but riddles that all seemed to hint at only his current state.


He began to think of, his daughter. How he missed her eyes. Blue and full of life, now gone existing only in etching memories scribed from all his mind could tell him; and his wife. She was the other half of the world he had grown up in and never known until they met. She loved the stars as much as he. Though he was a scholar of the night skies, it remained absolute that when seeing her she showed him constellations no book or professor could ever tell. If only they were here now, he would feel the warmth and guidance they both offered. Most of all he just wanted to be able to give himself to them again. If they were only alive to feel his solitude, together they could reinvent this world into the paradise it had never known.