unspoken words: good-bye Mother who taught me to mother myself.
|
 | Not Vivi, who must stay with her children; not Davy, but he is already here, having to die again with
her
this time, for the living take their dead with them when they die.
|
Light she grew, like a bird, and, like a bird, sound bubbled in her throat while the body fluttered in agony. Night and day, asleep or awake (though indeed there was no difference now) the songs and the phrases leaping.
|
And he, who had once dreaded a long dying (from fear of himself, from horror of the dwindling money) now desired her quick death profoundly, for
her
sake. He no longer went out, except when Jeannie forced him; no longer laughed, except when, in the bright kitchenette, Jeannie coaxed his laughter (and she, who seemed to hear nothing else, would laugh too, conspiratorial wisps of laughter).
|
Light, like a bird, the fluttering body, the little claw hands, the beaked shadow on her face; and the throat, bubbling, straining.
|
He tried not to listen, as he tried not to look on the face in which only the forehead remained familiar, but trapped with her the long nights in that little room, the sounds worked themselves into his consciousness, with their punctuation of death swallows, whimpers, gurglings.
|
| Even in reality
(swallow)
life's lack of it
Slaveships
deathtrains
clubs
eeenough
The bell
summon what enables
|
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