The World Turning

The wall's paper wore Bordeaux flowers and malachite vines. It was thick and sturdy for years, though the woman staring at its decay had not been there to witness what kind of things the paper had seen:
the birth of a small boy
kettles boiling on a wood stove
a sleeping rocking chair; the world
turning.

Twenty years older than I had ever seen myself grow, the woman stood -- tall and glowing -- knowing those she loved had already faced darkness and died and gone on.

My hair the color of datura swelled bravely in the still. My eyes the same green ripened and shined the pansophy of foreseen eras.

The wall had become my barrier to the night and as it exhaled I inhaled:
musk of worn pages
lavender
desolation.

But then the wall peeled slowly the dwelling; it opened to the sea and night was not. My sky was now cradled in the soft electric perceived only after a gray and powerful storm. My feet ascended from the ash wood floor and for the first time in 24 years of slumber, I flew.
into the zenith
beyond the breakers
above the crests of rumination my conscious never reached
the tail of my white dress tasting the salty waters.


e. chayes