from story
story as the shape and pull of things to come. as tide, as tidings. the soldier stops to help the old woman not because he is kind but because he is printed. he has seen terrible things, he wants to tell her but instead puts his hand on her stomach. shock of skin. dogs waiting underground, resting in the dark. the moment he decided on betrayal was not the moment he saw gold but the moment the old woman looked through him. to become glass; to become character. *** her grandmother’s grandmother and the wrong side of a war. confluence, chickens, a soldier standing quiet in the mud. they told a story that told a story. men red-eyed and spent, would kill the dogs as soon as look at them. she fed it pebbles while they watched, forced it true. when the fever came through she lost all her hair, spent her days peering through curtains at her destination. humming. animals scatter and the soldiers move through. *** to approach story, surround it with dolls and tuberculosis, give it playthings and drinks in the night, is also to see it recede in half-light. the story cannot be caught, cajoled, contained. we tell it in pieces falling out of the back of a truck or broken in branches on the ground. we make a nest or a bridge or a man but all we tell is our mark along the folds. a story cannot be frayed, captured, endured. a story is not. she was too young to know that silence was due in part to the body and in part to the words. hands shimmering: sound into distance. |
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