Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-08-13 01:10 am
azurelunatic) wrote2003-08-13 01:10 am
Night songs
Every now and then, scraps of song come to me. Some have been haunting me for years.
I used to title this fragment "In the Silence of the Night", but just now realized that it was mistitled. It needs to be "Souls I Used to Know".
The words are still working their way out of me, like the bone fragments from Mama's finger. (Mama got her finger slammed in a heavy door, and some 15-20 years later, bone fragments began to work their way out of the old wound and the finger had to be re-operated on.) Someday, they'll be fit to sing in front of others.
For now...
It was late night, far too late on a college weekend, the worst diehard nightowl nicotine addicts braving the cold outside by the dorm entrance. With them, but a ways apart, a girl, not smoking, staring up at the stars. Orange light from the dorm lights, the streetlights. She holds a stick of incense, lit, and watches the patterns the smoke makes in the freezing air. She has no mittens; she tucks her fingers up into the sleeves of her heavy down jacket.
In the smoke of her incense, in the idle chatter of the smokers, she feels the names of her dead. They aren't, strictly speaking, hers, but she's taken responsibility for their memory. No one else will. There's no one else to give them to. She can't do right by them. She can't honor their lives as they deserve. She did not know them. She can't dismiss them. She hasn't the power to send them onward. They're hers, for as long as she can bear them, and they her.
I used to title this fragment "In the Silence of the Night", but just now realized that it was mistitled. It needs to be "Souls I Used to Know".
The words are still working their way out of me, like the bone fragments from Mama's finger. (Mama got her finger slammed in a heavy door, and some 15-20 years later, bone fragments began to work their way out of the old wound and the finger had to be re-operated on.) Someday, they'll be fit to sing in front of others.
For now...
It was late night, far too late on a college weekend, the worst diehard nightowl nicotine addicts braving the cold outside by the dorm entrance. With them, but a ways apart, a girl, not smoking, staring up at the stars. Orange light from the dorm lights, the streetlights. She holds a stick of incense, lit, and watches the patterns the smoke makes in the freezing air. She has no mittens; she tucks her fingers up into the sleeves of her heavy down jacket.
In the smoke of her incense, in the idle chatter of the smokers, she feels the names of her dead. They aren't, strictly speaking, hers, but she's taken responsibility for their memory. No one else will. There's no one else to give them to. She can't do right by them. She can't honor their lives as they deserve. She did not know them. She can't dismiss them. She hasn't the power to send them onward. They're hers, for as long as she can bear them, and they her.
no subject
Yes, have a mucked up hand would suck!
no subject
no subject
god I miss clay.
no subject
But I've seen what too much does to skin... thank gods for lanolin.
no subject
no subject