Warm
vacations are most excellent. Gloves on your fingertips when ice gnaws. Marshmallows
roasting on a spit with the wind at your back. Warm when blankets are torn away, when soup
chills. When unicorn blood is poured over soft, syrupy pancakes. Severed with a
fork.
Warm
remembers and is remembered. Warm gazes into windows not to see her own
reflection, but to peer through and beyond until she forgets herself.
On The Island Calyx, Laurie
memorizes warmth. She stuffs warmth into her bundle on a stick over her
shoulder, on a stick that digs into her shoulder. Laurie is a flitting thing
hovering near a candle flame. Not too close, dearie, but not too far away. She must
go about seeking goodness of youth before the decay.
Some
of the giants make soup from burnt wings. They melt all those fairy wings. All those
soft, subtle moth wings. All those eagle wings, pixie wings, wings that have
not yet grown. What is that scent of brown sugar, drifting up from wing soup in
a putrid cloud? Some scents move silently through the air. Not this one. Wind
and raindrops. Hailstorms and high pitched waves. Screech.
Giants melt wings because they forget
how it feels to be warm. They drink syrup wings drizzled on pancakes, filling
their bloated troll stomachs. Laurie had a dream about selling her wings to the
giants. Some of her friends sold theirs for various reasons. Starving
relatives, college expenses. Cancer, Christmas trees, porcelain dolls, white
picket fences. Pitiful reasons, really. If Laurie ever sold her real wings she
would just up and buy fake ones.
So Laurie is one of the lucky
folks who avoided sacrifice for the longest time. She was able to fly into warmth,
into the deep blue sky and the deep blue sea and the shallow sky and the shallow
sea. Laurie sips coffee in the Italian villas, jazz flutists wailing in the
background. Laurie glides over waves, barefoot, over so many colors swaddled in
bright lights and ships sailing. Sun setting in the cerulean eggplant. Moon
rising in the silky fur, cashmere folds of the sky where dusk smells of
gumdrops and mothballs. Jupiter whistles, winks, screams Washougal. Ah, the cascading scent of pine needles. . . and wild things. Wild things ache
sometimes, comforted on The Island Calyx with a cup of
Melted wing.
Laurie aches. Shivers because the
remembrance of warmth is no longer. Because she felt sorry for those without
wings. Because she melted her wings into paint and painted The Island Calyx and
framed it so others would see. Because beauty requires sacrifice. Even giants
know that.
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