Starálfur [OPEN]
Jan 28, 2015 23:49:43 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2015 23:49:43 GMT -5
[Open] | |
District 11 | ---- |
The winter months are harder. We still till, but more time is devoted to going hungry and counting the bones showing underneath the skin than when the days are hot. With the earth covered in snow, and the wind cuts through like little knives across the cheeks, nothing is easy. Worse still, the world grows smaller. The four walls of our little house force us to stare one another in the face, to think and feel like we want to be by one another again. Deval has stopped talking to me. He fancies himself a man now that he’s past reaping age, but real men don’t cuss and swear all the time. Real men work with their hands, and settle down to find a family. They don’t leave their brother to deal with a mother whose never more than ten steps from a fainting spell, or a father that drinks until the sky is another color of brandy.
For what it’s worth, I have spent many of my days here, in the graveyard. I used to be too afraid to show my face past the iron bars. I thought that if it was too dark at night, and I was all alone, the dead would rise out of the ground and attack me for all the wrongdoing they’d had done to them. Now I know it’s just another set of empty altars, where people leave mounds of stones to forget. It’s peaceful at night, especially when the wind howls. I’ve come to love when snow falls, and sweeps up in little tornados around the headstones. I walk the rows counting and recounting their names. Hale, Calloway, Rhodes, Izar. I pick away the weeds, and brush off the ice. For a place that’s packed with the dead, there’s always work to be done. I started coming because of Benat (and Iago, since he deserves forgiveness as much as anyone) but now—I come for them.
The ones whose headstones will stay packed with snow, and get covered up in the drifts, I owe it to them. To clean off the dirt and grime, and to know that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s the decent thing to do. Imagine, having to go on without someone to know you ever existed? Maybe I’m just scared of not waking up one day but, it’s a terrible thing, to go, and to have no one left to say your name. We’re not all perfect people. Some of us are worse than others, we fight, accuse each other of things that aren’t true, but part of being human means knowing you’re breakable. But just because you have flaws is no reason to be forgotten. It’s a choice to forget someone. I know all of them, because there’s history here, and it’s important.
More important than listening to the ones that are still alive because they have voices, you see? They still can walk and breathe, suffer the world just like we do. But the ones that are dead, they don’t get a say in anything. It’s up to us to preserve them, to make sure that the memories don’t die. Or worse—they get twisted up into something else, something untrue. We’ve spent too much time believing in a world that’s not true for me to let that happen. We’re told it’s all fair, that there’s nothing more for us to want. But these people died in vain if you want to believe the ones in power don’t have what they to stop all the pain and suffering. It’s what I’ve tried to show—what I want to show—to someone, but all my talking to the dead, of stardust and anger, they think I’m just some pissant up to no good.
Deval calls it an obsession.
My being here just brings me back to the moment when Benat died. He says I’ve never gotten over that loss, and the sooner I can forget about it the healthier I’ll be. And I think, how can I forget my own brother? Or my cousin, too? And he says it’s not about the forgetting, it’s about moving on—about letting go. We don’t talk much, now. Not like the days when we would sit up at the hill and watch the sky tell us stories through the stars. He’s let go of what made us whole, and I’m still holding on to the only thing that I ever understood. I couldn’t leave this place along, even if I had wanted to.
When you have an itch that needs to be scratched, there are two options—the storied, run from temptation choice, where the world gets smaller and you survive or, you choose to give in. I hate that way of talking, though. Giving in. Because fighting an obsession is not like water filling up the lungs. If it were that gentle, or noble, we wouldn’t have the hard faced old men slumping at bar stools, or morphling addicts pitched against walls of tin. Real addiction is more a fire, that slowly licks from the tips of your toes and up. All the running in the world won’t save you from the way the flames creep up your legs, the way you make excuses about how—after just a few more moments, you’ll smother it, make it go away. Because by then the fire’s half way up your stomach and you—desperate to pat it out—don’t have so much a choice as a lesser of two evils decision. Do you smother the thing that makes me feel alive, and leave the scars for the rest to see? Or do you—like so many have done before—watch the flames creep up, until they’re behind your eyes, so you can watch yourself turn to ash.
Tonight is about my brother.
He liked the days after a fresh snow because he could still eat it—and the wet snow made the best snow balls, for smashing into Deval when he could get the chance. I’ve made a little cross for him, because a headstone is empty without decoration. In the winter months, the grey and black of this place reminds me of how alone we really are. No one’s come to call—save for the few spots of decaying flowers. I make little crosses out of the stalks of wilted corn, just so that Benat doesn’t have to go without. I do it because I know he would—he would’ve never let any of us be alone like this. I kneel up close to his headstone and clasp my hands together with the cross.
“Mom’s not feeling well again,” I say. My voice echoes even as the wind picks up. “She keeps getting chills.” I wipe a hand across my nose as it drips. This was his winter coat—sad to think I’m big enough for it now. “Deval keeps smoking and drinking with the men in town. Hasn’t found a girl yet.” Not that he ever would, I don’t think. There wasn’t anyone left around to tame him, which had been Benat’s job. “You should have seen what it looked like, when all the snow fell last night.”
I let out a sigh and put the little cross down into the snow.
It’s only a slow burn, after all.
For what it’s worth, I have spent many of my days here, in the graveyard. I used to be too afraid to show my face past the iron bars. I thought that if it was too dark at night, and I was all alone, the dead would rise out of the ground and attack me for all the wrongdoing they’d had done to them. Now I know it’s just another set of empty altars, where people leave mounds of stones to forget. It’s peaceful at night, especially when the wind howls. I’ve come to love when snow falls, and sweeps up in little tornados around the headstones. I walk the rows counting and recounting their names. Hale, Calloway, Rhodes, Izar. I pick away the weeds, and brush off the ice. For a place that’s packed with the dead, there’s always work to be done. I started coming because of Benat (and Iago, since he deserves forgiveness as much as anyone) but now—I come for them.
The ones whose headstones will stay packed with snow, and get covered up in the drifts, I owe it to them. To clean off the dirt and grime, and to know that they haven’t been forgotten. It’s the decent thing to do. Imagine, having to go on without someone to know you ever existed? Maybe I’m just scared of not waking up one day but, it’s a terrible thing, to go, and to have no one left to say your name. We’re not all perfect people. Some of us are worse than others, we fight, accuse each other of things that aren’t true, but part of being human means knowing you’re breakable. But just because you have flaws is no reason to be forgotten. It’s a choice to forget someone. I know all of them, because there’s history here, and it’s important.
More important than listening to the ones that are still alive because they have voices, you see? They still can walk and breathe, suffer the world just like we do. But the ones that are dead, they don’t get a say in anything. It’s up to us to preserve them, to make sure that the memories don’t die. Or worse—they get twisted up into something else, something untrue. We’ve spent too much time believing in a world that’s not true for me to let that happen. We’re told it’s all fair, that there’s nothing more for us to want. But these people died in vain if you want to believe the ones in power don’t have what they to stop all the pain and suffering. It’s what I’ve tried to show—what I want to show—to someone, but all my talking to the dead, of stardust and anger, they think I’m just some pissant up to no good.
Deval calls it an obsession.
My being here just brings me back to the moment when Benat died. He says I’ve never gotten over that loss, and the sooner I can forget about it the healthier I’ll be. And I think, how can I forget my own brother? Or my cousin, too? And he says it’s not about the forgetting, it’s about moving on—about letting go. We don’t talk much, now. Not like the days when we would sit up at the hill and watch the sky tell us stories through the stars. He’s let go of what made us whole, and I’m still holding on to the only thing that I ever understood. I couldn’t leave this place along, even if I had wanted to.
When you have an itch that needs to be scratched, there are two options—the storied, run from temptation choice, where the world gets smaller and you survive or, you choose to give in. I hate that way of talking, though. Giving in. Because fighting an obsession is not like water filling up the lungs. If it were that gentle, or noble, we wouldn’t have the hard faced old men slumping at bar stools, or morphling addicts pitched against walls of tin. Real addiction is more a fire, that slowly licks from the tips of your toes and up. All the running in the world won’t save you from the way the flames creep up your legs, the way you make excuses about how—after just a few more moments, you’ll smother it, make it go away. Because by then the fire’s half way up your stomach and you—desperate to pat it out—don’t have so much a choice as a lesser of two evils decision. Do you smother the thing that makes me feel alive, and leave the scars for the rest to see? Or do you—like so many have done before—watch the flames creep up, until they’re behind your eyes, so you can watch yourself turn to ash.
Tonight is about my brother.
He liked the days after a fresh snow because he could still eat it—and the wet snow made the best snow balls, for smashing into Deval when he could get the chance. I’ve made a little cross for him, because a headstone is empty without decoration. In the winter months, the grey and black of this place reminds me of how alone we really are. No one’s come to call—save for the few spots of decaying flowers. I make little crosses out of the stalks of wilted corn, just so that Benat doesn’t have to go without. I do it because I know he would—he would’ve never let any of us be alone like this. I kneel up close to his headstone and clasp my hands together with the cross.
“Mom’s not feeling well again,” I say. My voice echoes even as the wind picks up. “She keeps getting chills.” I wipe a hand across my nose as it drips. This was his winter coat—sad to think I’m big enough for it now. “Deval keeps smoking and drinking with the men in town. Hasn’t found a girl yet.” Not that he ever would, I don’t think. There wasn’t anyone left around to tame him, which had been Benat’s job. “You should have seen what it looked like, when all the snow fell last night.”
I let out a sigh and put the little cross down into the snow.
It’s only a slow burn, after all.
* * *
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
