The oldest glacier in the world is 8 million years old.” – Free Verse
My daughter had yet to learn of death.
We saw the glaciers,
Us two.
Water, frozen from millions of years before, they told us,
Waiting, here.
She couldn’t understand that part.
Angry shards of glass
Spiralling out, blue-green,
Seafoam frozen as it spat and bubbled.
Cold, raged.
I held her hand tighter, just us, looking at that big endless ice,
The snow buried us where we stood.
How nice it would be
Mother and daughter,
Frozen for millions of years.
The tourists would come take pictures of us,
Our remnants crunching little glass shards beneath their feet,
But I wouldn’t see the camera flash,
Standing hand in hand
Bubbling over with seafoam,
Empty, cold, stone.
I didn’t feel her when she pulled my hand,
our locked fingers were numb.
Stumbled over to that angry glassy wall
-red feathers.
There’s a bird in the ice,
Gap toothed tilted smile.
Why, mommy?
Can he come out?
When does a mother tell her daughter of death.
Red breasted death, wings still taking flight
Bubbles of ice
No honey, don’t look.
Chubby child’s fingers stripped of down winter gloves,
Pressed against million year ice
Reaching for that bleeding heart
Melt the ice, mommy, melt the ice so the bird can come out.
Don’t just stand there
Why won’t it melt?
And it melted from her red hot tears, dripping down,
Mixing, swelling, soiling pure ice of a million years,
Hot, scalding.
Millions of years, honey, millions of years
Nobody lives that long.
I saw her eyes then in the ice
Swollen up with seafoam
Red-rimmed,
the dead, red breast of a frozen bird.
I carried her away,
Crying, kicking, sobbing in my jacket,
Fingers reaching,
Spreading, taking flight.
Her blue-green eyes cavernous behind me,
Looming in that raging wall of frosted light.
He laughed at me then, frozen beak opened wide,
Immemorial in his cavern of ice.
You’ll let me die, mommy.
My cold fingers ice to her burning head
A million times over.
..............................
A dazzling heat wave, air wavering back and forth, a sloping hill.
Climb, you tell me, and I do, marching higher and higher through windswept grass.
And while I climb I hear you sing.
A familiar tune, a song whispered for years to freshly born creatures, figures emerging red and warm amidst the clanging of steel, lopsided creations you warned me not to touch until the night let them cool.
And I climb because I know you are there, waiting for me at the top of the hill, hammering away, beads of sweat on your wrinkled brow.
I can hear your voice humming softly, can see the tin man resting on your wooden table, legs splayed out, felt hat sliding down his round head.
I know you are there because I can see the sun.
Because the sun shines just a little more brightly when you toil under its flames, because now no more creatures slide out of the steaming furnace you tended to day and night.
And they all wept, in the best way a creature made of aluminium sheets can weep.
The little tin man took off his hat and bowed his head, and the plane fell off my table and broke its wing.
The fire buried itself between smouldering logs and the sun hid behind swollen clouds, for it could no longer warm your back or shine life into your little men of steel.
And so every night I close my eyes and climb just a little higher, listening to your song.
I save my breath, because I know I still have a way to go.
I cannot join you just yet, where the sun spins happily in the sky, where tiny creatures born in flames line up on your table, waiting for me to reach up and burn my fingers on their sweating heads.
So for now I sit with the ones you left behind, and we clasp our knobby hands together and wait for the sun to rise once more.
And one day, surrounded by the laughter of steel, you’ll be there, shining beneath the sun.
And I'll sit by your side, patiently, like a child, singing your song.
The tin man will get up and dance, metallic feet clacking on the ground.
The ostrich will tilt its head and squawk.
And you’ll hold my hand, and I’ll feel warm again.
......................................
Whales, flying in the sky.
Large, dark smudges, blotting out the sun.
Their heavy metal bodies groan against the wind, casting dark shadows as they drift past.
With the whales, comes the snow.
Flakes of white that stick to the ground, your clothes.
Coating your eyes, lips, ears.
Like a dust that falls from above, lightly leaving its mark on us all.
The whales used to bring much more.
Fear, as you heard them lumber through the clouds.
Noise, the neverending shouts that drilled through your brain,
Hatred, as people’s eyes stared up into the sky.
Now, the whales have become a part of what we are. They are not welcomed, they are not feared.
Simply, accepted.
The whales do not change, they never will.
They continue their slow migration, taking more and more, leaving nothing but white snow behind.
There was a time before the whales too, where the snow fell softly on your tongue, melting away into small rivers through your fingers.
There was a time where instead of the whales, there were birds, and instead of the noise, there was quiet.
But unlike the whales, who fly ceaselessly, on an unending path,
For us, there was no other way but for it to change.
Whispers.
Hundreds of hushed voices, talking over one another anxiously,
Like mist, lightly hovering, seeping through everyone, yet foreign, cold.
The whispers spoke like millions of small insects,
Creeping out of their hiding spots at night.
Hiding under the leaves,
Under the flimsy wood,
Under the dirt in small holes, where mud would fall down the sides and onto your face.
When it becomes day, the insects change.
They molt and grow human features, shedding away their long antennae and translucent wings.
Their thin bodies grow and warp.
The insects walk like humans
The insects speak like humans
The insects used to be humans
But they changed.
They warily look outside with their large bug-eyes
Their wings and legs shiver in fear
And when the snow falls, the insects hide inside, running from the cold, crawling under flimsy fabrics only to have the snow still seep through.
They smile, big grins plastered on, curled lips
They try and pretend as if the snow isn't there, as if when night falls they don’t scuttle outside and begin their whispered choir.
But the insects are small and frail
And in the cold,
When the sky changes,
They begin to fall.
Their pale skin shivers, their pincers tremble, and the choir grows smaller every day
But the insects still try and become human,
Faithfully, every day, at the crack of dawn.
How would it be if one day the whales came and took us all away?
Covering us in powder white snow
There would be no choir
There would be no shouts
There would be no cold, no mud
Just silence.
...................................
Whalefall
We always said Executive Chief R. looked like a beached whale. Nobody liked him because he never talked, just sweated silently in the broken AC.
I knew before everyone else that he was done, that we’d find him hanging from the vent, dull eyes turned to the busted ceiling fan that I mentioned once and he told me to piss off. They placed bets in the back office for when he would do it.
The secretary with bubblegum lips gave him a month.
He read them eventually, and I saw him on the subway that evening. He threw his bag at the seat, the papers flew everywhere, and I hoped HR wouldn’t know because I felt bad for him, spit dripping down his chin. He beat his head against the Your Vote Matters sign until the glass cracked and he went quiet.
I gave the cleaning guy a dollar and forgot about Executive Chief R. until they told me he’d been fired and the farewell party was Thursday night.
I wore a new shirt, came five minutes late, but it was just him and me and a bright yellow cake and I sat in the corner and watched him eat, standing over the folding table until he stopped cutting slices and just grabbed it, shoving frosted buttercream in his mouth, licking his palms.
He told me whales sink when they die, and all the fish eat from their bones until those too are gone.
The AC was fixed the next day, and I saw lemon yellow icing on everyone’s lips.
Elise George
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Elise George 5/21/2025 |
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Informatii Utile despre Canada si emigrare.