The little AU: Falling Leaves: Flight
The little AU: Falling Leaves: Flight
slashfairy
~~
There is snow on the ground when he goes out into the yard. It barely catches the light from the window, yellow through the old-fashioned wavy glass that's puddled over the centuries until it's so thin at the top that it just falls out of the wood frame- unless the frame dries to dust first, which, he supposes, is possible, though not for longer than he hopes he can imagine.
Every bone in his body aches from the flights and the falls and the long nights alone and the long days smiling and talking and signing and blinking back flashbulbs, and he could lie down in the snow right now and let it cushion him, let it be the water he will want next summer when it's hot and dry in the high desert of Idaho and he's hit his thumb with the hammer nailing up the trim around a window in the not-quite-finished house. He lights a hand-rolled and looks at the stars.
You borrow trouble, his mother'd said at dinner. You let your anger make you helpless.
I want the world to be better for Henry, he'd said, not answering her, not meaning to answer so sharply.
Or maybe he meant to be that sharp, meant the J'accuse in his voice to carry back down the years, to add weight and timbre to his voice as he'd raised it against iniquity and ignorance, to bring the tone down to where people could hear his voice instead of it shrilling against their fears in his frantic bird-trapped way.
Dad, Henry'd said. We'll figure it out. His voice the gentle hand cupping the trapped bird against the inside of the window pane, waiting until it stills, carrying it to the back door toed quietly away from the jamb, opening empty against the sky as the bird flies opposite the falling leaves into tree branches dreaming of Spring's nest amongst buds-yet-to-come. We'll figure the world out.
A deep breath, then another. All right. I know you will.
He helps with the dishes, washing while Henry dries and his mother puts things away. They sit in the living room, listening to music and talking, until he stretches and winces and yawns and says, I miss them, in a quiet voice.
I know, his mother and Henry say at the same time. I know.
He goes to bed and dreams in French of leaves and feathers and wind in his hair and reaches for Orlando, for Karl.
Later they talk, the three of them, conferenced on their cell phones, and promise the Winter coming to spend time together in the house at the end of the bluff road. There's no knowing what's coming this year- everything's shifted, and where the leaves bud in the Spring will be at the ends of twigs not imagined when they'd first left flying to fall into each other's lives.
But he knows that he's got them, and they him, and the risk is worth the fall, for the landing.
Night Flight // Marge Piercy
Vol de nuit: It's that French
phrase comes to me out of a dead
era, a closet where the bones of pets
and dried jellyfish are stored. Dreams
of a twenty-year-old are salty water
and the residual stickiness of berry jam
but they have the power to paralyze
a swimmer out beyond her depth and strength.
Memory's a minefield.
Saint Exupéry was a favorite of my French
former husband. Every love has its
season, its cultural artifacts, shreds
of popular song like a billboard
peeling in strips to the faces behind,
endearments and scents, patchouli,
musk, cabbage, vanilla, male cat, smoked
herring. Yet I call this colbalt and crystal
outing, vol de nuit.
Alone in a row on the half empty late
plane I sit by the window holding myself.
As the engines roar and the plane quivers
and then bursts forward I am tensed
and tuned for the high arc of flight
between snowfields, frozen lakes and the cold
distant fires of the clusted stars. Below
the lights of cities burn like fallen galaxies,
ordered, radial, pushing.
Sometimes hurtling down a highway through
the narrow cone of headlights I feel
moments of exaltation, but my night
vision is poor. I pretend at control
as I drive, nervously edging that knowledge
I am not really managing. I am in the hands
of strangers and luck. By flight he meant
flying and I mean being flown, totally
beyond volition, willfully.
We fall in love with strangers whose faces
radiate a familiar power that reminds us
of something lost before we had it.
The braille of the studious fingers instructs
exactly what we have succumbed to, far too late
to close, to retract the self that has extruded
from us naked, vulnerable and sticky,
the foot, the tentative eyestalked head
of the mating snail.
To fall in love so late is dangerous. Below,
lights are winking out. Cars crawl into driveways
and fade into the snow. Planes make me think
of dying suddenly, and loving of dying
slowly, the heat loss of failure and betrayed
trust. Yet I cast myself on you, closing
my eyes as I leap and then opening them wide
as I land. Love is plunging into darkness toward
a place that may exist.
[Thanks to iatrogenicmyth at theysaid]
previously: Disappearing
next: Frost/For the prevention of speed
slashfairy
~~
There is snow on the ground when he goes out into the yard. It barely catches the light from the window, yellow through the old-fashioned wavy glass that's puddled over the centuries until it's so thin at the top that it just falls out of the wood frame- unless the frame dries to dust first, which, he supposes, is possible, though not for longer than he hopes he can imagine.
Every bone in his body aches from the flights and the falls and the long nights alone and the long days smiling and talking and signing and blinking back flashbulbs, and he could lie down in the snow right now and let it cushion him, let it be the water he will want next summer when it's hot and dry in the high desert of Idaho and he's hit his thumb with the hammer nailing up the trim around a window in the not-quite-finished house. He lights a hand-rolled and looks at the stars.
You borrow trouble, his mother'd said at dinner. You let your anger make you helpless.
I want the world to be better for Henry, he'd said, not answering her, not meaning to answer so sharply.
Or maybe he meant to be that sharp, meant the J'accuse in his voice to carry back down the years, to add weight and timbre to his voice as he'd raised it against iniquity and ignorance, to bring the tone down to where people could hear his voice instead of it shrilling against their fears in his frantic bird-trapped way.
Dad, Henry'd said. We'll figure it out. His voice the gentle hand cupping the trapped bird against the inside of the window pane, waiting until it stills, carrying it to the back door toed quietly away from the jamb, opening empty against the sky as the bird flies opposite the falling leaves into tree branches dreaming of Spring's nest amongst buds-yet-to-come. We'll figure the world out.
A deep breath, then another. All right. I know you will.
He helps with the dishes, washing while Henry dries and his mother puts things away. They sit in the living room, listening to music and talking, until he stretches and winces and yawns and says, I miss them, in a quiet voice.
I know, his mother and Henry say at the same time. I know.
He goes to bed and dreams in French of leaves and feathers and wind in his hair and reaches for Orlando, for Karl.
Later they talk, the three of them, conferenced on their cell phones, and promise the Winter coming to spend time together in the house at the end of the bluff road. There's no knowing what's coming this year- everything's shifted, and where the leaves bud in the Spring will be at the ends of twigs not imagined when they'd first left flying to fall into each other's lives.
But he knows that he's got them, and they him, and the risk is worth the fall, for the landing.
Night Flight // Marge Piercy
Vol de nuit: It's that French
phrase comes to me out of a dead
era, a closet where the bones of pets
and dried jellyfish are stored. Dreams
of a twenty-year-old are salty water
and the residual stickiness of berry jam
but they have the power to paralyze
a swimmer out beyond her depth and strength.
Memory's a minefield.
Saint Exupéry was a favorite of my French
former husband. Every love has its
season, its cultural artifacts, shreds
of popular song like a billboard
peeling in strips to the faces behind,
endearments and scents, patchouli,
musk, cabbage, vanilla, male cat, smoked
herring. Yet I call this colbalt and crystal
outing, vol de nuit.
Alone in a row on the half empty late
plane I sit by the window holding myself.
As the engines roar and the plane quivers
and then bursts forward I am tensed
and tuned for the high arc of flight
between snowfields, frozen lakes and the cold
distant fires of the clusted stars. Below
the lights of cities burn like fallen galaxies,
ordered, radial, pushing.
Sometimes hurtling down a highway through
the narrow cone of headlights I feel
moments of exaltation, but my night
vision is poor. I pretend at control
as I drive, nervously edging that knowledge
I am not really managing. I am in the hands
of strangers and luck. By flight he meant
flying and I mean being flown, totally
beyond volition, willfully.
We fall in love with strangers whose faces
radiate a familiar power that reminds us
of something lost before we had it.
The braille of the studious fingers instructs
exactly what we have succumbed to, far too late
to close, to retract the self that has extruded
from us naked, vulnerable and sticky,
the foot, the tentative eyestalked head
of the mating snail.
To fall in love so late is dangerous. Below,
lights are winking out. Cars crawl into driveways
and fade into the snow. Planes make me think
of dying suddenly, and loving of dying
slowly, the heat loss of failure and betrayed
trust. Yet I cast myself on you, closing
my eyes as I leap and then opening them wide
as I land. Love is plunging into darkness toward
a place that may exist.
[Thanks to iatrogenicmyth at theysaid]
previously: Disappearing
next: Frost/For the prevention of speed