chapter four.

"We are all gathered home for the winter," said Evangeline, "Perhaps for the last time. Jericho is preparing for war across the ocean. Helen is learning to fly jets. Charlotte wishes to move to a warm island far away, and I want to go with her. Moriah will continue to study. We are all gathered here, for the first time in a long time. We clash with the hardness of Sarah, our new mother, but we have finally limped home for refuge. My hope is exhausted. I wish to find a crevice and rest. And yet I wonder - will he write? Will he call? We spoke a few days ago, Helen rolled her eyes because I laughed the whole time as I pressed the telephone to my cheek. He weaves gossamer designs in the air and draws me in. One weekend seven months ago he looked at me with love blazing from his eyes and everything was delicate. We walked through the blooming gardens and found a quiet bench and spoke. The sun was too hot and splinters worked through my skirt but I pretended not to notice so that the afternoon would not end. He grinned shyly and dared not hold my gaze. But that passed traceless out of existence like the breezes that had abandoned us. Now I am home. The kettle sings as the water escapes. Jericho is teasing Helen, she cannot stop laughing. Sarah our new mother shuffles past me to remove the metal from the heat - her figure is like a flame, her hands like bricks. I sigh and drift toward the window."

"We are home at last," said Charlotte. "Evangeline stands at her post by the window. Mother readies the tea. The evergreen displays its canes flayed red, the bells hang lightly. Moriah is making lists. Helen and Jericho's laughter forms a wall between us and them. I lift the murmuring teapot from its hot coils and relieve its ocean of a glass. I pour it over crushed flowers; they turn the liquid gold. I find the honeycomb in the sticky plastic box and I peel it open. It languishes seductively between spoon and steam before winding downward into the hot blue mug. I lift the blue with two hands, always with two. The heat penetrates my palms and the steam warms my chin. When I drink flowers my mind unravels contentedly like a cat stretching. When I close my eyes I drift in watery caves on the floor of the sea. I stroke in beats over to the stony walls, no longer pristine. My fingers linger regretfully on the gashes in the stone, the irreparable charring. I can't hear her singing any more, but some crevices still preserve a few echoes like a ballerina in a music box. But I have heard them so many times that I can hum them - and music underwater always sounds like one's own thoughts. I open my eyes. They are blue. I gather myself up and carry her to the piano. I set her down gently on the stool and I say, look. The keys. They are either black or white. Now press them all in succession and you will understand. And Charlotte carefully spread her fingers across the checked palate and let them move."

"Evangeline is dreaming and Charlotte is playing music," said Moriah. "They are both beautiful but I suppose I despise them both. When they have the chance they will leave. When they have the chance they will dissolve. They will go where I cannot follow. They do not live in daily succession. They try to fly without the physics, to climb without the mountain. They transcend but they do not live. Mother is emptying the dishwasher. I move to help her, pausing only occasionally to wipe the lukewarm water from the tops of upside-down cups on the wet dishrag with disgust. They do not respect me. I am too blunt for Helen and Jericho, to harsh for Mother and Father, and I refuse to mingle with the other two. And yet I know that I am durable - I, above all else, will endure."

chapter three.

"Jericho has come,” said Evangeline. “Our brother has shed his wide-eyed inquisitions and come. His brow sits low over his eyes as though strengthened through narrowing. He pours protein powder on his breakfast. He tells us a story about escaping from special-ops during his training. He puts on sunscreen and sunglasses and walks shirtless down the beach. When we were little he would convince us to jump off of his bunk bed, and we did. He folded a quilt on the ground and said it would make it softer. He gave us helium balloons from the supermarket to clutch between our feeble veined hands and said they would slow us down. We tugged experimentally on the thin ridged ribbon to the elusive hovering orb. We shut down thought and pushed our feet off the dull blade of the bed frame into flight. The ribbon uncoiled like rope and snapped taut against the watching rubber. It resisted with a pop and then surrendered to gravity. We fell in a heap onto the frowning floor. It kicked us for our insolence. We didn’t fly.”

“Jericho has come,” said Charlotte. “His eyes are still blue but they are hard and shiny like a smooth black jar, except when he speaks to us. When he speaks to us the shell thins like the discarded cloak of an old snail. His teeth are white. They used to shine like an actor's but now Dad says that they look like a shark’s grin. He is darkened by the California sun. Two years ago he fell in love with a girl for the first time. One year ago she left him a jigsawed half in the cold stone-grey fortress of a school. Now he falls in love halfway with every girl he passes. When Mom was sick my aunts and uncles called him a demon and when they looked at him they shook their heads. One day he left our ammonia house and ran down the street. The night crawled in and the streetlights turned on, and he didn't come home. Finally the chill scuttled up the blades of grass and we found him insolently at our door. Dad told him we were worried, he had done something very bad, he's grounded for the week. The water gathered behind his whole face until it overflowed, and he screamed that he wished Mom were already dead. They said he was a demon. He hid in his room and cried. The day Dad told us that Mom left he was the first to believe, and the first to cry.”

“Jericho has come,” said Moriah. “He does not escape now, nor hide. He plunges through debris with a torch, he snarls when he is angry. He conquers mountains and leaps from boulder to boulder like a stag or a flickering flame. He says what he means when he means it; he does not filter through water. He has a beach house and a sports car in California. He wants to be a millionaire before he is thirty. He weaves together experiences with flame and he tells stories. He keeps a picture of Mom in his bedroom. He swims with sharks and learns to fly.”

“But nothing penetrates,” said Charlotte.

“And here comes Helen,” said Evangeline, “our little sister. She how she comes with light in her hair and birds printed across her shirt taking flight. See how the breeze in her skirt turns her into an ephemeral being. See her eyes wide like a doe’s.”

“She walks with confidence,” said Moriah. “She says, ‘I am the sun around which you turn.’”

“See her chin lift her mask of selfhood,” said Charlotte. “But her hand twiddles her hair tie and cries, ‘I do not know who I am.’”

“It is strange,” said Moriah, “that the planet’s center of gravity is not solid, but air and fire.”

“But water produces life,” said Charlotte.

“And what then am I?” asked Moriah. “Is earth then truly the most insubstantial?”

“The light fractures on the surface of the water,” said Charlotte.

“She is too young to remember the death,” said Evangeline. “It is for that that I love her.”

“She parked the car two years ago and shouted, ‘you think you love Mom more,’” said Charlotte. “She said ‘she’s dead’ over and over until the waves crashed on the sand and the sun sucked all the life away.”

“The earth is no longer firm,” said Moriah. “So I scoop up rocks for weapons.”

“Helen is here, and she smiles,” said Evangeline. “It feels like an afternoon breeze, and it smells like coconut.”

“I have erected a wall of rocks against Jericho, I am armed and facing Helen,” said Moriah.

“I serve them lunch and then retreat into solitude,” said Charlotte.

“I hold this rock, thus it exists,” said Moriah. “I stand on ground, thus I am this, not that. I must wage war against the lies of insubstantiality, I cannot scatter like sand. I must be strong so that I can say, ‘I exist’ and ‘I persist.’”

“Moriah is throwing pebbles into the ocean,” said Evangeline. “They pretend to be bullets but their arc betrays them. The wind nudges and teases them. It gathers together and pushes the waves toward the gravity moon. The moon rests behind the daylight. Charlotte sleeps in her room.”

chapter two.

“Our mother died,” said Evangeline. “Our mother died like a bolt of lightning splintering a tree into us three. I was 7 years and 12 days old and a black rock plummeted to the depths of the ocean, wrapped in a sigh of resignation. I stared out the windows in car rides and let myself fly away. I longed for dark swathed stretches of night to erase me for awhile. When I was fifteen I tried to fly. I practiced flips in my living room. I fell in love with the mysterious man who fought while in flight, who taught me the art of war. I loved him for his flight; I loved him for his dreamlike words. Then he left like a breeze, three years present, rooted, emulsified into my being, the next day disappeared. When I was fifteen I tried to fly. I used my fireplace as a springboard for a back-walkover, but in mid-flight I looked into the heavy eyes of gravity and I surrendered. In my dreams when I am chased I stop running and lie down, let it catch me to kill the fear. When I was mid-flight off the fireplace in my living room I looked into the heavy eyes of gravity and surrendered. It placed its hands tauntingly on my weak knees and quivering belly and pushed me downward. My feet tried to catch and missed; the edge of the fireplace slammed into my shins and I crumpled. I crumpled like a discarded essay ridden with red ink. I mopped up the blood and hid the marks. I ignored my brother’s wide-eyed inquisitions. I couldn’t say I’d tried to fly. A notch carved on each leg to remind them of their duty. And now the doctors say they were broken, and re-healed slightly offbeat. They are strong but slightly off, these spindled foundational branches that bear my weight.”

“Our mother died,” said Charlotte. “Like a wave snipped into knives by wind and rocks, chopping grey-crested over black ocean. I dove beneath, to let the force rock over me. But it caught me, swirled me violently across the dull inconsistencies of the rocky bottom. I went limp to conserve energy, my breath, and thought, I would surely die. But as the last breath expired, a current lifted me like a hand to the limp surface under grey clouds. I knew it had saved me and I dove into its depths, to its glorious muted existence with the glimpses of light magnified in its aquarian scatter. It was there that I remembered her liquid hazel eyes and the musky smell of milk, thin arms and the sound of the waterbed splashing as I snuck under the hot covers after a bad dream. In the sun-warmed caves resting on the bottom I heard the murmurs of her singing. I guarded her jealously, her indefinability rendered silence sacred. I emerged to breathe only, but underwater, warm pulsing love flowed into the crevices and drew together the wounds.”

“My feet are on the ground,” said Moriah. “They are glued by gravity, the force between two objects. I trust the stability of the earth and its irresistible pull to resistance – I am this, not that. The moment a thought forms it must be spoken – I must feel its shape on my tongue, weigh its heaviness in the air. I must say “it is round” or “it is sharp” or “it is crude.” I must speak so that it does not take root, because roots too closely intertwined necessarily must separate; there must necessarily be a perishing. My mother is buried in a sandstone box. The soil pushes up grass obliviously. I stand between the sharp dry grass and stare across the beach. The rootless sand drifts and blows away with a scattered sigh.”

chapter one.

“I am 22 years old,” said Charlotte Claire. “I can tell a 2003 Cabernet blend from a 2005 vintage just by smelling it. When no one is looking I drink my coffee through the small black stirrer so I can taste the sugar on the bottom sooner. I get dressed up before I go to the library because I feel more alive. My eyes are grey when I’m shielded and blue when I’m feeling. I don’t know what color they are right now. He is sitting across from me. He gets sad when people say the word ‘suicide.’ He is sad but he has not lost hope, because if he lost hope he would not look sad, but hard and empty like a smooth cold black jar. I am smiling. My teeth are white because I whitened them yesterday. My eyes are painted black. The bag around my heart cinches tightly like a full purse, it draws the back of my throat together into a gravelly undertone to my words. I see you note with the forced relaxation in your shoulders, with your eyes directed outwards, that we do not connect. You don’t know why but I know the bag is cinched tightly, you can hear it in my voice. I want you to look, but I know I would attack you. I want it to be right. I want to be alone.

Now I am driving. I am 22 years old and I had three dates this week. I like the upward curve of my eyes and the way my brown bangs fall just below my brows. I want to lose 15 pounds. I didn’t love anyone today, or yesterday, or last week. I want to go back in time and uncinch the bag. I realize that I don’t know how. My foot gets heavier on the acceleration, the streetlights pass like missed joys overhead. The electric music passes like a watery dream into the passenger seat, a tuned-out guest. You Charlotte always drift across the white-dashed lines; they are guidelines not rules, until their reedy bending ends in your imminent perishing. The bridge’s potholes torment my wheels. Now the bay stretches into a sunset behind the silhouette of cranes and naval warships. Now the road sinks into a tunnel, the shoulders disappear and cement walls lift the ocean blue above my head. Everything constricts; I hear the hum of the engine echoing in circles down the hollow underwater tube. When I was little I held my breath from beginning to end; now I know that you could live your whole life underwater, breathing in and out, in and out, and not pass out of existence.

“My name is Moriah,” said Moriah. “I hiked 10 miles up a mountain in 20 degree weather. I liked the feeling of my foot plowing into the rock, each conflict declaring, ‘I am this, not that.’ I liked feeling warmth generating from inside of me, flowing through my capillaries and hanging in a coat around me. I liked the frozen cascades of small waterfalls over boulders to climb around. I liked pulling myself through the rocks, hiding in the earth, emerging to the endless views of valleys and mountains. I like hovering in the log cabin shelter halfway down, gathered close to friends and strangers around the flickering heat, pouring fiery chocolate down our gullets before bearing the teeth-chilling 2 degree wind chill again.

Now I retreat like a bear to its cave. I hoard nuts and meats. I curl under blankets. When I am not moving I am cold. My body temperature is two degrees colder than the average human. When I drive I wear a coat and hat and scarf and gloves, and turn on the heat until the air scratches my sinuses. When I shower I stand under the stream unmoving. I do not dress until I am dry, so I do not shiver when the droplets chill and bind to my clothing. I shower before I exercise so that my sweat is clean, so I can revel in my health. Today I visited a friend on the other side of the bay. I navigated through the wide open streets of the beach town and parked in his cement drive. I step into the cold and let myself shiver violently, in hopes of generating heat between now and the doorway. There he is. He knew of my arrival; he has already opened the door. I greet him with a hug (I am this, not that). My shoes slip off and my feet hit the hard cold floor. I sit on a stool and twine my legs like roots around its base. One hand holds the counter, the other the top of the stool. I speak of the studies I’ve read and the shows on TV. I toss heaps of earth onto the kitchen table: this is real. We speak of the sacrament of marriage. When I see the water shift in the center of your chest I crush my insides into sandstone, a clumsy wall. I comment on a small detail, the food perhaps, and the danger is passed. My name is drawstring; I bind things together.

“I dream of flight,” said Evangeline. “I bind myself to motion and I skim on top of water. The board slaps the cohesion beneath me like cement; air makes all else solid, deadly. The foam peels before me in a running “V” like kings and queens bowing. A crash would be like slapping onto a flat road. I must make myself small. I jump with the foam around me. I live for the moments of breaking-away from the endless blue expanse, the leap into white. But Moriah has bound me in a sandstone box. I told her the water was solid and she believed, she rode on the board and when she fell she nearly shattered. Then the concrete gave way to sinking; her feet pulled her down. So she bound me in a sandstone box, carved it around me and forbade my flight. Now I wait until she sleeps and I creep out, I gingerly sidestep her stalactite warnings dripping from our ceiling. I pass Charlotte, swimming in blankets with sea-salted spray on her cheeks. The door creeps open and the night air envelops me in its arms, breathes into my lungs. My eyes turn blue and my cheeks are kissed with pink. The door creaks closed behind me. I drift up the path to the cliff. The clouds are moving fast overhead, like a stampede. I crest the bank and raise my arms like I used to on roller coasters at night, to the side with eyes closed, imagining flight. The wind peels the sleeves of my nightclothes away from my arms and twine around me. I stand unmoving. I dream of flight.”

“I dreamed I was a prison guard,” said Charlotte in her silence. Her hands, twined tightly around her mug of coffee, and her head tilted slightly down as the morning rays poured around her back, murmured together, “We planted a spy in one of the cells. She succumbed to brutality. She saw our injustices and she succumbed to the bars. One day she escaped. She ran with her blonde hair streaming behind her. Her face was distorted with hate. I ran after her but I couldn’t keep up. So I crouched on all fours like a wolf and vaulted myself towards her. She screams (or laughs, I can’t remember which) that I am jealous and I launch towards her, I pin her to the grass by her shoulders. I am not jealous, I said, you broke the rules. You broke the rules. She fights but I fight harder. We throw her back into the cell and lock the door with a triple padlock. I stand guard like a crouched thing. Now she is a prisoner. Now she is hateful. Now she is lost.”

“I put the bread into the toaster and I prepare the butter,” said Moriah. “I eat it quickly to feel the heat rest in my center. Charlotte is sitting at the table by the bay window – the light from the sea reflects onto her back, and her face is in shadow. Evangeline has gone for a walk. She is in love with the man from across the bay. But I have placed her in a sandstone box before she learns that love twines roots too tightly together, that separation means some measure of death. The hard clay of the coffee mug warms in my hands and I sip the hot black liquid. It seeps like warm earth through my veins and binds my hand to the counter.”

“I see the fresh sun resting precociously above the horizon,” said Evangeline. “My feet flicker lightly across the boardwalk. The swallows spin in whirling dervishes. The clouds are cotton candy, pink and yellow. A line is drawn from my eye through water to the burning orb, another from the celestial blue through into the deep to earthy bottoms that no eye has seen and big-eyed fish flit through the gaps. The world is an orb divided by one line up, and one line across. A woman is collecting shells of beings that once were. A boy is searching for treasure with a beeping beggar’s cane swinging to and fro, to and fro. The seagulls squabble over breakfast.

an introduction to gravity

don't mind me. this is a short piece right now that i'm letting have a little breath of its own. it'll become what it will, i suppose. feedback is welcome.

---

“Our love is the measure of the cross we bear,” said Charlotte.

Charlotte Claire loved to stare at the sea. She loved how the black depths turned blue in the sunlight, how it lifted and turned a sanctified white in the air before plummeting to escape on the shore. She loved its roar ending in whispers, how it curled within itself again and again before obliterating into peace.

Once, three years before, she sat on the California shores and fell in love with el mar, with the way the sunlight kissed the foam into eternity. Her legs carried her unresisting feet through the sluggish hot sand that tugged pleadingly for her waning, to the rough flat stretches of once-wet sand, to the shifting dampness that seemed to draw her down into itself. Finally she reached the hissing meandering ebb and flow of the last of the clear water, and waded in deeper until the brisk water slapped against her legs, then thighs, then finally submerged her bottom half. A wave lifted mightily to slap the newcomer to the ground, but her feet pushed from the bottom and she dove through the wave, and the foam pulled through her hair like a brush.

For an hour she stayed in the waves. She drifted far enough away from shore that no one could hear her, and finally, abandoning convention, began singing as loud as she could, leaping at precisely the moment to join the white cresting. The waves became more and more powerful, rising above her, sometimes pulling her under, but she shot to the surface again, gasping in the air with a mystical joy, eyes closed, imagining herself breathing in sunlight. She felt encased in the arms of power, on the crest of danger but perfectly safe, guarded by the air and sun above her. Finally her limbs began to feel limp and trembling, and she slowly worked her way to shore. For a terrifying moment it seemed as though they kept pulling her back out, for an instant she feared she would run out of strength before she could make it to the miniature models of people traveling like ants left and right across the beach. But she calmed down, and timed her strokes with the waves, and eventually they returned her with a gentle sigh onto the shores. She stood up, legs heavy, and pulled herself through the newfound gravity towards the cluster of people talking excitedly. Something seemed to be wrong. Her heavy feet carried her upward. In twelve seconds she was close enough to hear what they were saying.

A boy went for a swim 45 minutes ago. His body just washed up on shore.

-