[Issue 2023.67]

‘Microseasons of the Dead’, Vanessa Fogg

Art © 2023 Cécile Matthey

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Deep Cold

Crack and splinter of heavy ice. Cold sunk deep in your bones. (How is it that you can still feel your bones?) A mountain of snow. White sky.

Hint of Thaw, Tingling of Blood

Trickle of running water. Fire in your fingertips and toes. Melting ice slick beneath your back. The sun above is white.

A Bird Calls

Black silhouette against the distant sky. Its harsh hawk-cry is the loneliest sound.

Floods

Roar of snow-melt down the mountain. Rivers of mud. Bare trees struggle to stand upright. You cling to a branch so you’re not swept away. Vultures with human eyes roost above, staring down at you.

Brief Spring

The first leaf buds unfurl. A trembling light. Everywhere, a delicate mist of green. The air clean and new on your tongue. You feel your heart beating again, and it’s as fragile in your chest as the sunlight falling through new leaves.

The Ache in Your Heart Pulls You Down

Leaves darkening overhead. Sunlight curves toward the earth. Gravity finds you. A thickening weight in your chest. A weight that pulls you forward and down. You find yourself stumbling down the mountain, pulled irresistibly on.

Dry Winds

There are others of the dead, walking with you. You see them at the edges of sight. You do not turn your head to see them full-on. You do not speak to them, nor they to you.

Onward. Onward. You trip over tree roots. The weight in your chest grows. An expanding pressure within. You fall again, scrabbling at the dirt. Dirt and grit between your teeth. A dry wind starts blowing. The rustle of dry, yellow-spotted leaves.

Cicadas Sing

You crawl, and the dead crawl with you.

The shrill cry of cicadas, all around. Newly hatched, alive and unstoppable.

Fresh Breeze From Afar

A softness, a dampness, in the air. Sparkle of light in the distance. A silver river flows beneath blue skies.

Reaching the Rocky Shore

Before the river: a shore of stones.

Smooth and worn and jagged and rough, all jumbled together, shades of dull gray. Stretching along the river’s edge, for as far as you can see. The water calls, but the field of stones lies between, and you know that you can’t cross it. Not yet.

You sit at the edge of the shore of stones. You wait.

This is where the first memories wake. Here by the river, and in your tingling fingers and toes. In the rush of blood in your veins. The twisting turns of your gut. It’s heaviest in your chest, but it suffuses you through and through—this amorphous cloud of regrets and thoughts.

The cloud gathers in on itself. It contracts and condenses. It’s all the weight you’ve been carrying, now falling inward to a single point. The collapsed core of a star. You gasp, and the weight fragments. Shatters. Pieces scattered within you, hard and dense. Bullets from a collapsed star. Stones.

Stones that you must dig out. That you must give up.

Releasing the Weight

These are some of the first stones:

Tiny irritations and slights you’ve held to your heart. Peers who ignored you. Someone who snubbed you. The times that your worth was passed over in favor of someone unworthy. Pinpricks, tiny thorns, thousands over a lifetime, slipping beneath your skin. Hardening and adding weight to your soul.

You dig them out and fling them down. A rain of pebbles on the rocky shore.

You reach in deeper.

Now it’s not just the snubs and unkind words or torments from people in passing, or those you despised. Now it’s those you knew well. People you were close to. People you loved. Those who should have loved you.

The times they turned away when you reached out for help. The times they disappointed you. Betrayals both small and large. Cruel words deliberately spoken. Old wounds flare open again. All the rage and resentments you’ve carried. The once-best friend, the mentor, the lover. The sister or brother. The parent who should have cared.

The rage is engulfing.

These stones hurt to dislodge. Your dead flesh clings to them. Because underneath—in their absence—is only sorrow. Only boundless grief.

You kneel on this riverbank with the rest of the dead, your eyes burning and blurring as you grit your teeth, and you dig and you dig.

Every grudge you ever held, every injustice you’ve suffered, every grievance toward the world at large. Shame and hurt and the desire to hurt in return. You don’t forgive any of it, exactly.

You simply let them go.

Wounds Mark Your Feet

You are empty. A hollowed shell of skin.

Trembling, you step onto the shore of stones. Smooth rocks roll beneath your feet. Others scrape and stab. The roughest, sharpest stones of all are those you put into other people. Your own misdeeds, your own cruel and careless sins, cast out by others into this rocky field.

The Salt of Your Losses

You reach the river. The water sings to you, clear and pure.

You step in and cry out. The river stings. It’s fire in the cuts on your feet, the scrapes and wounds.

The river runs with the salt of the tears of the dead.

The tears you shed on the edge of the Shore of Stones, tears that fell and wound their way through tiny channels in stone, making their way here.

You cried on the shore, and now you find yourself crying again. You’d thought yourself emptied, but you were wrong; there is so much water inside you. It flows and flows from you, an inexhaustible spring, joining and filling the river. All the sorrow and grief of your life. What was left behind in the stones’ absence. An eternal flood.

You cry and cry, until the water turns sweet.

Tears dry on your face, leaving no salt behind. The river is cool and fresh. The cuts on your feet heal. The river washes away the last of the sorrow, the regrets and disappointments of your life. The other shore is in view.

Entering the Garden

Burst of birdsong as you step onto a green shore. A glimpse of bright feathers in the trees. The splash of a fountain, the scent of roses.

Tree Fruits Ripen

You walk through lush orchards. Peaches like sunrise, gold and blushing-pink. An orchard of plums, dark and heavy as late dusk. A final orchard of apples, just turning from green to red.

Windfall fruit beneath your feet. A crush of sweetness. Your mouth waters. But you don’t reach for a taste. You walk on.

White Butterflies Flutter

A meadow of tall grasses. Goldenrod and asters. The other dead are long gone. You don’t know when you left them. White butterflies flit in the field.

You exhale, and breathe out more butterflies. As they flutter away, each carries something from you. A longing for something in your previous life. An attachment to the sweetness of another world, to mortal honey and light. The ache and longing for someone you loved.

Burning Sun, White Desert

Who are you, when all human relationships drop away? When you are not parent or child, caretaker or one cared for; partner or sworn companion? Not a teacher or student, not a leader or someone led. You are not a King; you are not a subject. You are not a loyal soldier of Empire, or a productive member of society. Who are you when you’re alone, when no one else sees?

You walk alone into a desert. The hot sun white above.

Who are you when what you value most about yourself is gone? Did you prize your own intellect above all? Your wit, your clever turn of phrase? Your ability (or so you thought) to see into the heart of things? Your dazzling beauty? Your skill at creating beauty with words or paint or song? Did you pride yourself on being compassionate and honest? Strong-willed and principled? Gentle and kind?

All that is gone, burning away in the desert. The sky an infinite sea above.

A Hawk Calls

Black silhouette arrowing its way across the distant sky. Its fierce, harsh cry.

Last Steps

The sun has fallen to earth. It looms directly before you. You have only to keep going, and it will burn the last of you away. The last of your consciousness. The last of your ego. The last of your self.

Deep Cold

You wake under a white sky. A mountain of snow. Crack and splinter of heavy ice. You could not take that last step. You are here, again, at the beginning of the calendar year of the dead.

An infinite turn of years. Numberless spins of the great wheel. One day you will exit the cycle. You’ll be free.

You’ll be the hawk winging across the white sky. You’ll be the sky and the sun. Nothing and nowhere. The desert, the wind.

© 2023 Vanessa Fogg

[Issue 2023.67]

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