myth for cloudberry

The celebrations in the town in the coldest part of winter were beautiful, full of color and light giving flesh to the darkness. The grass men only ever take one day at a time to celebrate, but when they do it was on the edge of reason and so loud the mountains returned their howls and they wake ill and return to work, or the administration they love so much. Some did not wake from the deadly celebrations.

Prisoners get the same day off that the grass people do - only were not given liquor and drugs, so we actually sleep.

I have dreams of the old house - the one that is not ours anymore. I know I worked much of Sweetie’s life. I am not the main character. I will not be here when the story ends but we can all say that. My arms are chapped with the shapes of letters on them. I pay the matron for a bright orange salve to soothe them. She’s a prisoner who’s here for burning an entire field with no more than five grass men in it. I feel strange that I should continue to try and make houses in words, even after every structure I’ve made has been destroyed.

I tried to build a place that made sense and all of that has come to nothing. Now I am so tired my body made of cracking noises. The smell of yeast covers me, fogs my thoughts, even as I sit in the yard of the prison with nothing to do for the first time in longer than I can remember on one of the days the trash men are celebrating. The ground is so foul we avoid it. Trash, blood, mucus, and piss ease slowly into the hard earth, walked on until it is nearly stone. Yet I notice a woman, one of those who were once alive, scraping at soil by the fence.

As I approach I am surprised to see she doesn’t walk away from me. I remember her face, of course, from the limestone quarry. She was a friend of mine. There is some salmon lipstick left over from life. She wears an expression like she has something to say but cannot speak, or maybe she could not remember what to say. It is the expression of someone who is trying very hard to be in one place, but is falling desperately into another.

We are lost in translation. She just points to the ground. She is so transparent I can see the orange sun set through her forehead. I have never been so close to one who has not died and not been able to leave like her. She is not a cloud, she is just in two places at once.

The next time I go to the place she was, there is a single berry, as miraculous and colorful as a song. It rises up from another world. This is a small sun in my sadness. I can feel the soil rise around me. I always thought death came all at once, but this is a slow rise. It feels the soil is opening around my feet. Eating me incrementally like a patient worm. I will remember this much later when everything falls, which it is sure to do; this small piece of gold.

And then there is the call to the town square where we will be filed back to work.