how easily we bruise.
July 4, 2010 at 10:50 am , by Haley
Effortless effigy; they stuffed newspaper into the fireplace, lighting it and—quick! Rushing outside to watch the coal colored smoke heave itself from the chimney with a straining puff, creating creatures in the ink clouds and making stories of the shapes. They lay on their backs in the lawn and argued softly about which noun-cloud subdued which constellation and how many adjectives were honestly necessary. When they ran out of smoke, they’d race back inside to set fire again to the details and excuses of everyone they’d never known.
Spark! Light! Flame! Rush! Point!
On each visit to the inside they would take the smoldering ashes and soot from the munge of words and spread it out on the floor by the door with their hands and fingers. And as they ran in and out they would leave footprints of warm ash, making it easier to find their way back and forth and, should they leave, giving anyone who might come before the storm—and it would storm— a good idea of what they had done there and what it meant; what it looked like to take a culmination of negativity and excuses and churn it into childlike joy and deep breathes of cool summer air.
“I think maybe it’ll rain,” she said.
He said, “I think it’s definitely going to rain.”And it did.
The Gods gave the green light to rainfall, their cheerful applause reaching mortal feet in a distorted sort of anger at the distance required to share the beauty. Our creative couple—newsprint natives—were swept away in a current fashioned from the raining down of god-thoughts of what’s what and who’s where and why this is different.
They found their feet eventually—and don’t we always?—, but continued to follow the stream because, “we’re where we need to be, I guess, and we’re what we’ve worked towards. Right?”
Right.
With some help from Nick.
I love collaborative stories.
Category short stories / Tags: /
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