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By Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo
The myriad, needle ends of the iron roots dug
deep into every stone; each stone fed the Tree with pulsating, dark
life. The Mountain could not understand you. There was no hearing
beneath the vulgar colors. There was no Mountain, only stones.
You tore stones from the roots and hustled to
make fire. The lights on Rosa’s cord became glowing scales. It
wrapped the child in its coils and it slithered up a rising path
along the greens, past the bloodied fruits and flowers, and into the
yellow confines of the star.
You raged with the stones. Fire failed so many
times, and the stones that would not spark to your Will flew from
you. You triumphed at last with a certain pair of blue stones. You
cuddled the spark with dried moss and tried to gather kindling from
the other stones to feed your fire. You raised it. Rosa wheezed up
the tree.
More kindling! More wood!
The knuckles got skinned; the fingers grew
bloody. You fed the fire with blood. Inevitably, smoke rose. The
smoke slithered up through the same path of the scaly cord, up to
where Rosa was kept. Your very guts cried out against the smoke. The
Fire fed itself, the Fire of a hundred, then a thousand stones. You
cried out for Rosa, caught between Fire and Tree. The struggle
drowned your voice. You swallowed smoke and leaves too.
The last thing was Rosa blurred by the rising
smoke and the flying sparks. Then she was only a desperate wheeze.
End with future necrostalgia
Then you woke up breathing heavily. You wept
while I recorded the tears of the only dream you ever shared with
me. Why was it so clear to you? And why is it so clear to me, my
head being in a rot? Later, you packed up and left. So, I hated your
dream even after I made it mine.
I hear you now. I’m sure it’s you. Nobody
else mumbles through tears like you do. Your weight on my hallowed
ground is a heavy presence. It is you, my petite. That’s your tear
I felt, I know. How you are now, up there? Maybe you know how I
died? I don’t know, myself, how exactly. All I remember was an
Ache. And the Ache grew greater than me.
Or I remember a Dream. And the Dream got
everything upside down, eventually. Therefore, I am now, as you find
me, in the Inversion that is Truth. You’ll find no fiction here in
this dialogue of tongue and worms. The fiction must deny itself and
so it does. I do. The only laughable, necessary fiction here is the
fact that I must let go of all this while the Order lets go of me.
This is my story. I talk to you with the words of worms, and
you’ll never hear me because I choke on Earth and you choke on
saltwater. The worms too will have to feed on these farewells. Maybe
one of them will take it to you when you are here, beneath Earth
somewhere, telling your story. Maybe.
Or that could also just mean another fiction I
must die with.
You just can’t have a say in the matter
anymore. The tears you leave will dry and the petals you dropped
will rot. In time, these will add another hardened layer between us.
Leave me, hating Lyotard and the lesser dreams. They’re all just
toys to me now. Emotions and ideas. This hate’s just something
petty I must play with until—well? Until.
Stop stifling your fluid sorrows and just get it
done with. I want to hear your footsteps fade from my dead-set
senses. It ought to become a happy departure soon.
Go, leave! Live!
Love, I began with such a mess. You and I both
know, there’s only one way to end this.
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