A quote: “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.” ~~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I’ll start with a story …
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Mornings are for me. I barely sleep but when dawn pinks the world, I’m up and out.
Never quite worked in the city after … well …
We found a country house. One that had never been part of the 21st century. Or most of the 20th either. I’m not complaining! The work is endless, tiring and I sleep better.
The sky is pearly grey, and the meadow is covered in tule fog. I revel in the quiet and look forward to seeing him. He still looks so young.
Mornings are for us, even if he’s in a city grave.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Lewis says: How do you know?
Papa told me.
When?
This morning.
Really, where was he?
Where he always waits for me, in the field by the trees.
Could I go with you tomorrow?
Sure, but Papa won’t come then.
Why?
He can only talk to me because I’m the only one who believes him……….
I call them the picture people, the faces in the photographs sitting on the dresser in my dorm room. I’m told I once called these people Mommy and Daddy, but my memories of that time are faded and blurred, confused with scenes in the family sitcoms I like to watch when I’m not having lessons.
My strongest memories are the last ones, of the day the angry mob came storming down the street, yelling about eliminating “the monster.” The tall man looking grim as he stands at the front door, talking to them in language too fancy for me to understand. And then the crowd surging forward, the windows smashing and the curtains bursting into flames.
The man pushes me into the arms of the woman, tells her to run and not look back. A number and a name.
We get out to the car and she doesn’t even put me in the car seat, just jumps in and drives through the night. There’s no light except the full moon overhead, casting everything in silver and black.
The further we go, the more she shakes and swerves. She’s gasping for breath as she pulls off in a grove of trees and gets out her phone. I see a dark stain on her t-shirt, but I don’t understand what it means. I’m just thinking about how it’s her favorite and she’ll be unhappy to have it stained, like I was when I got chocolate ice cream all over my favorite shirt and she said I couldn’t wear it any more.
A car pulls up, and there’s more talking I don’t understand. Then the woman tells me to go with these people. I’m uncertain, because I’m not supposed to go with strangers. But she insists, although her voice is so weak I can hardly hear her. “Go with them, and mind them just like you mind Mommy and Daddy.”
That’s been three years ago, and I’ve been hard at work here at the Institute school, learning about the special talents I have. I don’t understand a lot of it, like the “spearmints” that everyone is upset about or why they would make me a bad person or make people hate me enough to burn down my house and kill my parents. I just know I have to work hard to control those talents so they don’t control me.
And that if you go through the western mountains, you’ll come to a forest of trees so tall they touch the sky. In it is Sparta Point, where Spartan and his fighters live. They’re the people who rescued me and brought me to the Institute school to learn to control my talents.
When I grow up and know what I need to, I want to go there and fight for people like me to be safe and not attacked because of all the spearmint. But right now I just look at the forest on this side of the mountains and watch for the people I can just sort of see but nobody else can.
jay spry says: He was my brother.
My only brother.
My big brother.
I worshipped him as we grew up.
He died recently of the effects of severe alcoholism.
During his life he grew more bitter, more hateful and more destructive with every passing year. His parents, his siblings, his children, his friends, himself. All immolated in the hell mouth of his bitter hatred.
He died recently of the effects of severe alcoholism.
Of all the horrible things he had done in life, the worst was that I could not feel sorry about his death.
msa says: I saw my brother on Interstate 10.
He passed by,
Two lanes over,
In a red ’66 Mustang,
Paint oxidized to point of having a whitened patina,
(The kind of car he would liked working on).
He was leaning slightly to his right,
Attentive to some detail,
Pushing in a cigarette lighter
(this only comes to mind-
he had stopped smoking months before)
Or perhaps getting a map out of the glove box.
And I watched him pass by me,
My mind stupified by a day at the office,
Too dull to react
Or pull up next to him and wave and say hi
I remember the ride to the funeral home.
A broad Ohio on one side,
Still winter-brown banks detracting microscopically from its stately procession,
On the other side, a high school ball team at practice was calling it the day
Trudging back to the locker room and a hot shower
A lone uniformed shape brought up the rear with the equipment bag.
The funeral home
Brick faced
Facing a narrow street
Lined with naked trees waiting for their silvan resurrection clock to strike Spring
He lay there
Delicate hands crooked into a semblance of pax,
Hands that picked a sweet guitar,
Still ending up looking like they’d been stolen from a store display.
And his children
Blessed in the ignorance of the young
Tugging at the sleeves of the newly arrived
Declaring
“Daddy’s dead!
Daddy’s deeeeeeaaaaaaad!
He wearing makeup
Just like mommy.”
At his home,
A farmhouse he was restoring
A well-traveled guitar hung on the wall,
And all I could think of is how much he had done that I wasn’t even aware of,
Of how I wished to have sat
And spoken together one more time.
And there I was
Driving down highway 10,
And my brother passed by me
Doing some mundane task
(do not try to convince me that it was some stranger,
and my mind played tricks)
I would have it that
I saw him one last time
As I remember him,
Gentle of demeanor
Permitting the eyes a goodbye,
Driving down highway 10.
Cameron says: Mom always told me that if I’m out in the field to tell her and dad if anyone is out there. I see her as the mist clears. She must be important because the clothes look really expensive.
I run home and tell dad. He tells me to go to my room as he steps outside. I hear some noises and then nothing. Mom makes me breakfast and then I start class.
Years later, I learned that the government tried to stop homeschooling but our community fought back. That was the last agent that ever got sent to stop us.
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