by Priyanka Thomas
A cooling wind dissolves the atmosphere’s dense waves of heat and singing scent of blood. When the leaves disappear, the ground is littered in a beautiful dance of color, burnt and refined. How do the trees survive a brutal pattern of gore and birth, of sadness’ pulchritude and death’s sweet remorse? Children’s limbs fly through the air and sink in the soil, freshly boiled through the waves and the color, making way for beings to grow through the piles of freshly burnt leaves and dirt.
Nothing can wash a staining scent from my memory’s random, cruel palette. I can recreate its moldings, watch films with different undertones, but the foundation- and the effect- are always the same. I change the ending and the grace notes play between the main melody, but distractions do not erase.
You play with the soil, and hope that the worms come out to play, with their heads in their ass, their ass in their heads, more clever than we will ever be. We look up to the sky and the stars align in a way that we claim to comprehend, and we share beds with no one, just the warmth of solitude, just as cold as your only true friend.
We have arms and we throw them around, limbs we plant in the ground, and we have eyes, but we see nothing beyond our own homes. We grab baskets of blood and we sprinkle it in the mud, and we chastise the blood that saves, while we waste.
I can’t tell you more than I can, and I can’t tell you as much as I wish. There are reds and golden browns and muddled yellows that I can’t describe quite right, and there are sounds that can only be described by emotion’s blood or its children’s smiles. I can’t tell you what the trees mean when they grow, but I can tell you that their leaves fall, litter the ground, and when that’s opened your eyes, you take it from there.
