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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4616 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Life so Far Caballo Oscuro My first memory is of my grandfather dusting my legs as I sat on his knee, Setting me so that the sun did not make me squint and holding my hands as he had great, important things to say. He spoke to me in songs, of caravans and fantastic sunsets, a place where home was the next good place for trade. My father called for us all every time he came home, and we each received kisses In order of our age before his palm caught my mother by surprise as she drew the innards out of chickens or took the skin off potatoes . I remember her smile was the brightest in the world, remember her kissing him with bloody hands held away and hair falling over her eyes. I remember loving my world and the safeness of nights in my bed. Grandfather died, and we all had to wear white shirts and black bows at our necks, my sister became my shadow, my father inherited his spirit. I wrote all the stories I could remember in dust, scrubbed them out with a stick and recited them each night so that I would not forget. Some years later my parents were waltzing in the garden, while my sister plaited branches of jacaranda and became distant and beautiful, saying strange things and spending too much time combing her hair. I sometimes went to school, when there was enough to make a class, mostly I stole tomatoes from the garden and went on adventures. Aeroplanes came and took my brothers away to places I had seen on a map and my mother cried each time she received a letter. No one told stories anymore, father bought dresses from Las Palmas and tortoiseshell combs for mother’s black hair. I remember listening to them singing late into the evening. My father died when I was away, It was in the summer and I wondered who would take care of his fruit trees and quarrelsome chickens, who my mother would give her smiles to now. She began to take religion at its word, arrange flowers in church with aggressive hands, Spoke of right and wrong love in a monotone, quoted verses with numbers attached. Sometimes I take chances and show her the man that I have become, sometimes I want her to remember her bloody hands and dances with the man she ran away to be with. Instead she spits words written too many years ago, prefers these commands to the ones she felt her heart respond to as a young woman, Love has become a bitter word and a bouquet once a year. |
