Plastic Clouds

She met life on the train.

And when they spoke, it was aimed only at her, perched against a window and peering at the speeding foliage.

The woman turned uncertain, for as her ears painted impossible colours, her skin warm texture, and her nose glittering dew, her eyes saw no more beings come to reside within the emptiness afore.

And yet life chose to grace the moment,

Bestow from an outturned hand a beauty unseeable,

From which the woman drank their offer.

That there vibrance, I saw stitched into the fabric by the hand of loving labour.

A verdance,

A vitality!

Vibrations shimmering just so,

Hence, they surely spark and flow with that clear water.

Veins pumping blood that when spilled unkindly only serve to soak and nurture the beings which turn steps in a dance, romping about in need and want, essence buzzing unapologetically—it—is—all, —so, —wonderful, is it not?

And the woman could not help but smile blushedly,

On behalf of that display which life had sung to splash, to splay with calm fervour upon the barren.

And the woman felt, through all the skin on her body, life turn itself upward, sunbeams spearing through the stifling ceiling.

In the gaze of the heat, I flourish!

And stoop to breathe within the deepest crannies, rise for the tallest bluffs, around which I see only in winged awestruck flight,

All more and they that only seek to reach—with peaks and beaks and feathers mine and their own—back toward the heat, toward the clouds; duende whose alluring elegance they touch, reverent; whose lascivious pulchritude they cradle, venerous; whose care and compassion they offer gratitude enduring.

The clouds, oh,

How they love,

Sift the lands and deeper for shakes of that soaked blood,

That water,

Poured back into the cycles, the systems, the expressions and beings,

Only to meet…

Only…

The sunbeams impressed upon the woman were allowed only a moment more to embrace warmth before a snap!

A thrumming chord akin to a harp screaming in pain,

It’s medley stringing, snapping,

It’s melody springing, rending,

A voice, just now singing, shot free from the train,

That was now filled with cold, absent rain.

Rain that fell not as water, but synthetic scraps of callous taste that turned the nose and itched the bones with no respite in sight.

And life began to rumble…

Only for them to return to their wellsprings and splutter and cough and transform and stare in aghast transfixion at the horrific venom that neither I nor the heat nor the earth packed below had planted.

That spreads and strings along within them all and cannot help but lodge in my throat,

Myself at which I pick and prod and scar and rip open,

That fall from that gash in shards and scraps and slivers of silver reflection that laugh at my wretched self.

What say you of these…

These plastic clouds?

My loving Nephelae, trapped, taut in shimmering film, who must now fill their pails with tears, squeezed from their faces by their own suffocating gaol?

What say you, as one who so easily sinks fangs into me,

Tearing open great lacerations, goring, mutilating?

The woman’s smile had faded,

Fallen swift as a leaf torn from a storm-wrought bough.

She shook in place, trembling abashed beneath the thundering voice brimming with kindly ire and cold fire, hovering over her, daunting.

A voice still somehow fearful.

You needn’t worry outright and attempt to divulge an answer.

I seek only a mere glance returned in sure-footed passing,

Through which I would show you a future,

A wavering suture,

A tainted balance brought thin and bent to breaking by unnatural eternality and that unnerving, poisoned desire.

But I fear,

I fear that knife disposed,

Which, though flimsy like gold,

Cuts sharp!

Sharp as that very metal… 

She could hear their bitterness and taste their sadness, and as if a flood burst forth betwixt her ears, it dawned upon her that life was strung up between these thin, shimmering fibres, a maven of their own unique craft sewn button-like to that there web by threads of icy silk,

Threads that choked out cries and sobs of pain lamenting those from whom she had been unwillingly absconded.

Then the woman was struck straight by life's scream,

A shout!

Silent enough that it would surely be heard,

By any nigh and fore;

If only another were to be seated beside them.

I yearn to stare aface,

And yet I must wrench myself away, avert my eyes, screw on the bottle cap and pick at the label with lackadaisical genteel.

I resign myself to solemn appeals which,

In spite of despondent refrain,

Fall helplessly upon negligent ears,

And which only further ensnare the chorus wholly.

So in this instance I have embraced my indignity!

An affront to myself,

Marred forevermore,

That I shan't ever recover,

May never discover how I might possibly recoup even an aspiring fraction of that which is already lost, already dissolved into the aether.

I…

It would be, in fairness, lacking—to make such claims, like,

‘All I am left is to covet hope and luck.’

Yet I am held taut,

Tender and scathed by my own fretting claws and teeth,

Holding fast to this tenuous aspiration cast long ago into the depths,

Constricted beneath the infrequent deluges that splash down, 

Consigned to walk myself asunder,

Compelled, with a dreaded finality that collapses my very energy, to wish with you that perhaps, should the plastic clouds above puncture and grace showers of pearl that glitter like the stars upon them, showers of navy and electric indigo, showers borne of the very marrows of that there welkin,

That a dew drop,

Amid thousands,

Shall land amongst the patter,

On flowers—faces that remained anyway.

Blooms given a chance view above at the radiance that peeks abashedly,

That did not lose their breath,

That were spared from losing their memories,

In tearful rain.

The woman couldn’t speak, her voice retreating chest-bound,

Scarred,

Scared to let slip even the most minute sound,

As if any erroneous utterance would incur wrath that transcended mere phrase.

But then in an instant, the torrent of words,

Of dry rain,

Of shiveringly warm sunbeams,

Evaporated.

Her nose fell dry upon stale fabric and immediately bucked, her tongue letting go of the glamour that had only just now allured it.

Her skin rippled in goosebumps that became suddenly, icily apparent, and her ears painted nothing more than the out-of-tune rumble of the railway racing below.

And her eyes still stoutly refused to alter the expected.

Yet,

The woman found herself unable to face the sight of the trees,

The life that leered outside the train.

Unprepared to meet the gaze of the eyes that stared back, barely visible, unclear and intangible in the thick scratched glass that muffled and tinted and warped and obfuscated all that vitality beyond its suffocating, stifling cage.

Unsure of what to do with the empty, crinkled bottle in her hands,

A bottle whose label was losing its hold at one corner,

And whose cap she had fastened so tightly it left blush-coloured imprints on her finger.

She almost wished it had drawn blood.

by William Faichney