Was I speaking of the wind? Was I? Or was the wind whispering about me? Standing like fire between earth and air. Smell of the river through the desert. Smell of water and parched earth. Orchards.
She transcends the earth she walks upon. Both of and beyond the world. Still, things that touch the others touch her too. Her son.
His father. Many years ago and not so many. That arm resting uneasily around her even now, even in death. Was it his military precision that made him never fit? Keeping him from melting completely? His passion stiff against her pliancy.
Each flowering became insistent conquest of new territory lying open before him. Each time a new invasion. Sometimes, it could be impressive, a man over twice her age.
Still, flattering as it might have been, and it was, it was Isolating too.
And then they said she mourned his strength. His protection. And she did. Albeit she mourned him too. Mourned him more. The soldier man. The rough deity under whom she had unrolled herself like a rug. Then such undeserved treachery. Yet, also, in an odd sense, how suitable. How he might have appreciated it. Perhaps he did. Even with the knives. Maybe especially because of them.
How often had he mentioned certain friends? Names uttered with love and admiration? Wind off the desert in the end. That’s what it all became. Perhaps that’s all it ever was. All it ever could be in this life. Perhaps in any other too.
And then the second man. This second man. O gods, how she mourned him in spite of herself! In spite of her majesty!
Like fire spirits corner prowling the dusty minds of these local Egyptians, he assumed the form of anything he chose, wind or sea or clouds. Strong stone woven into the fabric of her earth, he had curiously, amazingly, held her together even when she knew that he was just another man. Another strong man to help her. Keep her safe. But he was more than that, wasn’t he? So much more.
A Roman like the desert, ever changing and changeless. She could mold his sand. It yielded willingly to her. But she could not push the greater form of it, the expanse of spirit that lay beneath it. That wild and unimaginable authority tamed some part of her she had never known. She had never felt small and sheltered until she met that. The rock beneath the sand. A third of the world was he? No. She the Greek and he the Roman. They were half and half.
Those others, that Octavian, he was nothing. Nothing, no matter if he now should overrun her dynasty and push her son into the sea. Which he would do.
The first boy so much like his father, like the first man. Conqueror prone to ungainly charm. Confidence and self doubt tightened in a ball. Overbearing. Handsome. Occasional fits, especially when under strain. She didn’t know whether he had it in him now, and things had not gone that way. Octavian would not have it. A shame. Still, he was his father’s son. Anything might happen. Might still happen.
Not for her though. Not now. Bedrock gone cold. Loose sand rivering aimlessly. Darkening. Afterglow fading above the hills. Wind kicking up. Scented. What was it? Peaches? Old childhood favourite.
Somewhere, a solitary flute. And then a cry. She knew that there was sickness. All around them. In the midst of the people. Spreading. Some died and some didn’t. But that was the way of such things. Time and tide. Leaves. Fruit. Birds. Serpents. Flood and drouth. Her men, her last man, gone.
Sometimes birds meet the sky’s edge, her father had said. Then there would be nowhere else to go. Her Egyptians told of secret hidden ways in valleys of the souls, but she knew better. She knew these ways hung before all of them, unseen in the heaving air. She knew that if one pitched oneself into the folding of that element, then one could slip between all things.
Then the bedrock would be there again. The sand would be supported. Strong arms would wrap around her and she would find that passionate shifting flame that she had once known. That was all she sought now.
That distant flute again. More cries. Other sounds too. Perhaps someone coming.
She reached into the basket; something shifted. Best not to wait.
Wind rising again and the whispering of sand over itself. Then quiet.
Day’s final light fading from the sky.
*Romeo and Juliet 1.4.111
Damn, buddy, if I could write like you do, I wouldn’t write like I do.
Thank you, Daniel. I’ll read that as a compliment.
“Sometimes birds meet the sky’s edge, her father had said. Then there would be nowhere else to go. Her Egyptians told of secret hidden ways in valleys of the souls, but she knew better. She knew these ways hung before all of them, unseen in the heaving air. She knew that if one pitched oneself into the folding of that element, then one could slip between all things.”
This is fantastic. The poetry in it is immediate, but the phrasing and prose of it creates the greater impact, it’s angular and awkward at times but that comes together like plants vining, flowering, and making a greater sum of its parts. Thank you.
Thank you for reading, Josh!