Grief
A blue evening in a blue room once in a blue moon. Wolves, on an outcrop and the sun beats down and the grass grows high and all the dead people milling about in the sky. All it takes is for one of them to reach down a hand and help the boy out of the wolf. Then there will be one less. The people in heaven don’t seem to know and we can’t know them either, they are children of the sun and full of light and their eyes are so light they cannot see anything darker than them. They are blind and we can’t see them, we are blind. Pull the blinds down at the end of the day when the sun has finished beating, a dead heart, and settle down for the dark with a story to protect the Mind from the lurkers outside, gathered on the hillside, the long black shadows of the boys listening with their hackles up and their ears raised, hoping to remember nights without a mad moon.
Don’t howl or I’ll have to chase you away with a big spade, we don’t let that sort in now do we? All the milky stars are out tonight–say hello–stirred up in the massive bowl of the blue sky, deeper blue than the story of my mother’s eyes. If only I could remember her, all we have is a page from a book with her name on it done all fancy in monks’ calligraphy it might not even be her name, we always maintained that it was. On frosty nights I wonder if she is living among the boys on the hill with their fur and their speed and their bloody teeth to keep warm. I never could abide going to the dentists’ so I stopped bothering, it’s getting to the point where I have to file them down with wire wool. They ache so much especially when I am sad. Why do my teeth ache when I want to cry? Pressure building up in my head so my ears burn and everything is burning even the moon burns its way into the room and I can taste it I want to eat it. My head is a moon and I’m out the door mooning moaning along in distress. They hate me mother, help me, they all hate me. What am I doing? They are waiting on the other side of the hill, where the orange trees were before the boys turned tail and destroyed everything. Angry, I suppose. Waking up one night with a long drawn-out waver of a nose and grey fur and claws must be enough to make anybody angry. I remember the clowns at the circus, it must be like that, happy and confident and aching sadness but with murder and meat as well. The clowns were the first to go, swallowed by the mist that came marauding along one winter evening and in the morning the boys had all changed. Why? And where did the girls go? Why did it not happen to me mother? Please don’t leave me behind, take me with you please. I don’t want to change. I don’t want the change, you can keep it.
I recall when you were here you would feed me scraps from the table. My father ate later than us when he got home from work and even then I felt like a dog, I’d get the strap if I didn’t paw the line and now look what’s happening to me. Oh my teeth ache and my paw-pads hurt and something has landed on my tail. Can’t remember, oh can’t remember who am I now?
The two-legs are wandering about in the sky, twinkling like Orion. So many lost sheep. We are on the outcrop and the sun has gone down and we are blue. Everything is blue. If you’re there please reach down and help me, pull me out. I’m stuck in this hunger and rage and hate and hair and I don’t know me. I can’t know you. I did but now I can’t. Whoever you are, please give me your hand. I don’t bite the hand that helps me.
Han Adcock is a writer of short stories, short long stories and poetry ranging from the humorous to the bizarre. He has appeared in Penumbra, Expanded Horizons and Poetic Diversity variously as Han or Hannah. His page is www.facebook.com/wyrdstories.