blood, birds and glaciers

Lawns are emitting the fragrance of chemical flowers. The firehouses are empty, dark. And I'm stranded on a sidewalk in the dead part of town, Futility's ghost swirling in my head like smoke from her cigarette.
And I tasted her faded lips.
And I thrashed inside her wilted figure.
I look skyward. Huge birds blanketed in black are soaring, wingtips slicing, painting invisible arcs. Their silence is grace. Their grace, ineffable.
A fire flickers in my chest.
And I remember Futility...

She was sleeping as rain rattled off rooftops and cascaded into gurgling gutters. Puddles coalesced on muddy lawns, flooding and silencing that chemical scent.
I closed the window, lit a cigarette and stared at her body. I felt like a painter, an artist studying the female figure, attempting to digest an unmanageable microcosm of perfection, incalculable beauty. The human mind cannot grasp the concept of perfection -- but her body offered a glimpse into that staggering abyss. I felt impotent. Out of place. Like a bloodstain on the immaculate linen of a queen. ("And queens do not bleed.")
And then, words fell. Softly.
"We are giant glaciers of ice. Shifting. Moving. Slowly. Our coordinates will change. Eyes will traverse strange landscapes. Our flesh will taste foreign climates. And we will befriend invisible lovers and lick their salted wounds behind locked doors in midnight rooms. We will attach just to peel off, away. Every experience will mold, shape and sculpt a body, a memory, something to live inside us. But when our pupils dilate and fade for the final time, what will be the sum of these experiences, these memories, these bodies? Who will read our epilogues after we exit? And who will stand in the shadows of our intangible sculptures and offer validation?"
Her name was Futility.
I left her side, walked to the window and peered through the curtains. Cats and dogs continued to fall, a punishing rain. It was the kind of rain that forces lovers and strays to scamper and take refuge.
Through the rain and across the soggy landscape I could see a cemetery. The graveyard was like a quilt stitched into the hillside. Hidden in the threads were bodies buried in boxes, forgotten secrets.
And I wanted to hear them.
I put on the shirt she had crawled on and stained with her sweet scent, climbed into pants of dirty denim, strapped on my boots and walked outside, into the thick of it.
I was soaked in seconds but remained undeterred. The tombstones and mausoleums beckoned like a dying chapel, a lighthouse.
And I was a captain lost at sea.
The pelting rain was telling me to abandon ship ("There is nothing here"), turn around and return to sheets warm with Futility, but I stayed the course. This was a pilgrimage I had to make. I wanted to know the secrets -- the code of the dead.
Lightning flashed like dying filaments.
Thunder cracked like broken bibles.
And it was then that I realized the dead know nothing.
The dead.
The unborn.
They all occupy that great invisible void: the collapsed cosmos of nothingness. Inconceivable and unjustifiable, like Futility's flushed flesh.
And it was then that I realized there is no heaven, white and glowing. There is no perdition, fiery and furious. No towering god. No devastating devil.
Only this moment.
A flinching eye.
A beating heart.
A drop of rain.
A kiss like the Fourth of July.
I jumped ship and ran through the flooded streets.
And it was then that I realized Futility was my chapel. My lighthouse. My Jesus. My secret. My moment.
I was dripping like a dead sailor as I ripped through the door. A staggering silence greeted me. That detestable stillness of an empty room. Her scent lingered but Futility was gone.
I peeled off my saturated clothes, threw them away. I was naked. Stripped of the moment. My scars glistened in the dim glow of candlelight. Hot wax. Clammy flesh. Contrast. Unity.
I fell to my knees, crawled into bed and pressed the pillow to my face. Her scent slithered into my nostrils and filled my head with lamentations.
"Oh, Futility, where have you gone? You've left me dripping, shaking, alone with a heart full of dirty blood."
A flash of lightning penetrated my closed eyelids.
And I waited for the sky to explode.
I opened my eyes, looked skyward, and on the ceiling, written in the ink of a ghost, were the words:
Appreciate the knowledge of the unknown and embrace the weight of the invisible; for life is a fleeting kiss from the unborn, the futile.

Stranded on this sidewalk, I'm trying to shake her memory loose, trying to exorcise her tepid ghost. I'm trying to pretend that nothing happened. I'm telling myself Futility didn't exist.
But she did.
And she does.
She's a caged bird trapped inside my cold chest, pecking away and making a bloody mess. The doctors tell me it's heartburn, acid reflux, something. I don't listen to them because I know better. It's Futility, eating me from the inside out.
"And I won't deny you, baby."
The black birds of grace have disappeared and the sky is a gray canvas, blossoms of clouds are pluming.
I can hear thunder rolling over a distant prairie.
It smells like rain.

mc