literature

Of David and Anna Beth

Deviation Actions

Published: Dec 4, 2008

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Literature Text

_{I awoke to the wail of rain; rain that lined a jagged horizon from which too tall buildings and incoherent voices dripped.  The sun, scribbled a dirty yellow, poked its wary fingers through the sky.  The sky was so faded now—like the bandages of a wound that couldn’t be closed.  It spilled its orange blood onto the walls of my room, and the air grew nostalgic from the color.
Church bells rung in the distance.  They were far not in centimeters but in the seconds of a sunset and the time it takes for present to fall into memory.  The city shivered with lethargy as their peal formed easy loops around it, pulling those that were left out of their slumber.  Though virtuous, the sound was empty.  Everyone seemed to hear their voices, but no one took the time to read their message.  They just rang, every now and then.
Sometimes, our eyes would focus on our hearts, encircled by their sound.
Sometimes, but never too often, we’d realize how faint they were.

Shadows embraced the walls—walls which never ceased to stare at me—and lined them like pumpkins.  Was my face lined in such a way?  No.  The weight that pulled at my expression and prevented my smile had started to lift.  Ever since I met Jenny, they’d been softening, these petulant lines.

I made my way downstairs, indignant at how sad a melody my feet conducted.  As my fingers met knob, I froze and gawked at the sight of them.  How long had it been since I really looked at my hands?  Had these hands—these hands that mended the wounds of others and sculpted contours that actually had meaning and dribbled life onto paper—really lost their worth?  Did I lose hope in their ability to heal?  To create?

Before a door made sentient by one too many knocks, a ripple brushed his eyes.
She had taught him what healing truly was.  Each life he’d met, whether it was in the ER or the pandemonium of his heart, ran in sloppy cross-hatches across his palms.  Three stood out the most.
“Life.  Love.  Success,” she trilled, smiling this smile that would have thawed winter into spring.  He was sure of it.
“Long life.  Vivacious heart.  So much love…and much success.  Much meaning.”

Life, heart, and meaning were held tight in the voice—her voice—that echoed in my dreams; held tight in the honest eyes that bore into me now.

Staring at his palms, life, heart and meaning blended into two strokes; two eternally closed eyes.

______

The sky was a swollen grey and the dandelions that day were looking down.  Their yellow had become pasty and sunshine had begun to lose its touch.  The heavens were cloudless, though, and that brought a small sliver of hope to Anna Beth’s heart.  It pounded loud in her ears, insistent and sure.  She felt that she should live off its strength, so effervescent and shrill.  But, there were too many rational little things that swam in her mind.  Round and round they went, in this perpetually grey pattern.  She’d become ill-mannered toward them.  Gradually, the craving for radiance far greater than that of proven ideas burgeoned.
She couldn’t.
Too wary was her mind to accept the strain of new ideas.  It didn’t want to think about what it’d be like to finally breathe and fall into rhythm with her heart.  The beat of it.  The burning and screaming of it.
A blue jay landed on the tree outside.  Black ran across its wings, green in close pursuit.  In its eyes glowed the furnace of strength, and in its mind was the will to feed its young.  This was the sixth time Anna had encountered it, and she smiled tiredly at its signature plume.  Her window glass was cold today; it chilled her unsure fingers and the feeling seemed incapable of dissolving. They remained there still, for it was their place to be.  They were always there when she looked at the world.
She had the perfect canvas.  Its hard surface gave Anna Beth certainty—a knowing that every day she’d regard its portrait the same way.
And so, her view of the world was forever structured.

Today, the painting was abstract.  Laughter rolled from the lips of fall and bleached the sidewalks and trees in vivid colors.  Unpredictable colors.  But these colors were on Anna’s trusted canvas.  Didn’t that make them just a little bit routine?  To Anna it did, and that was all she needed.
In a flurry that revealed only a few feathers, the blue jay departed.  Anna pondered where it would go and what it would be like there.  Surely it would be lured to a place where the air was thinner and there were less frowning buildings.  The fire in the bird’s eyes was also something she trusted.  She believed it would guide the bird to a secret sanctuary that tasted of rose petals and warm shops.
Anna Beth let the cold churn on the tip of her fingers.  In her mind, she imagined it lining her insides.  She felt it numb her; felt it freeze all the notions in her discontent mind; felt it prickle her core.}