Morning-Glory

(for my sister)

The air spoke and Veolla could hear it. Still, she lay under heaps of sheets. Her verdant eyes gazed without blinking not out, but into the openness.

Polished oak floors supported her bed: a throne under high ceilings. No other furniture stood in the room except for a gold-trimmed Victorian mirror that only embellished the feeling that in her loneliness, she was not alone.

Most would consider the company of those no longer present intimidating. But her tenderness gave her strength as the soft foliage of a rose allows it to remain beautiful in winter.

I awoke down the hall. The white sense of morning shone through sheer curtains and I saw (since I tried to feel what I knew my sister could see, without trying) the shapelessness of shaking atoms.

Veolla had persisted through the night; fearless of the dark. My awareness of this was not through words nor sight, but through the circuit of light that kept us connected regardless of physicality or place. Though I could empathize with her ability to see through time, I could not do so myself; at least not as vividly. Veolla had always crafted magic the way gravity holds us to the earth and allows us to watch, individually, each star on Orien's belt. She was rarely predictable in prophetic moments; but kept you steady on a rapidly spinning planet.

I entered the suite to find Veolla calm. The right side of her face was gently exposed; the left, guarded in down pillow. She stretched her slender arms and arose with eyes fluttering wide.

As had been shared so many mornings wiping sleep from our eyes, we walked through the room we knew was never empty to have coffee downstairs in wool socks and satin robes.

e. chayes 

Refugee

Sunday morning on the edge of Noviembre was biting and left the streets empty. The yellow line, which strung together back roads, seemed to swivel. Perhaps it was the sort of cold that whipped the cornea until it cried; perhaps I just felt like crying – each tear to the tolls of a church bell, each vibration rippling to the back of my throat 'til I could taste my body’s salt.

I kicked the earth with my stride and watched deciduous spines curl around a gate in defiance to their battered night under blankets of rain. At least I had company in the woes of disillusion. The gate’s enclosure was typical of the Gothicus artistry that lingered in la Regione Lombardia. Permanent shadows, cast not by light but by battles and blood and historical passerby, seemed heavy in the stone.

I knew this sadness wouldn’t last. It was not caused by the rain nor the nostalgia that transitioning seasons often induce. The sky was what cradled me into café corners and inspired me to write. This sting was less expected than the rain and made frigid my will to accept.

Though within days it would thaw. 

Afterthoughts would melt through me,

the way tea crawls into your belly just short of boiling. 

e. chayes

Viola

Bouquet beginning to smell, 

I-- warmth of bedroom eyes

under stacks of books

in only lace-- soak

in french records

and vanilla extract

to hide from the cold and rot.

Plucking its stem (a petal), i sway

off the bed

Oil of my prints staining

violet pore with sediment;

sediment from the day that beat

dust on my windy face

and left me wondering

the shade of a rose.

e. chayes