Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Love Song by Deirdre Kessler

So, today I am going to do something a little different. I found this short story among the documents on my computer. When I first read this short story, Love Song by Deirdre Kessler, I was a little bit in love with a boy who wished he was a ghost and wasn't satisfied with his life. He had depression, and I tried to be the one that could help him, yet I made no real difference. This short story kind of hit me. It's pretty different, but I really like it.

Love Song:

The moment they saw each other, they knew in their bones they had a distance to travel. That first night they walked far into the desert, they slept under cottonwood trees by a creek. The creek sang them a song that trickled through a crack in time. And for a while, the lovers moved as one.
    She knew the ways of all that grew, of all that slithered, hopped, ran, or flew. She found a place where a garden would thrive, gathered stories, explored all her desires. Someone said the sound of her name was a warm sigh at daybreak. Resting by a water hole under a bower of willows, the girl sometimes was invisible. A kit fox would drink its fill by her side. A wren would alight on her shoulder, taking a moment to preen and flutter in the watery shade.
    The boy also took on the ways of wild things, moving swiftly, jumping when startled. Someone named him Coyote, and the name stuck because he was lean and tall and his hair was reddish and bushy. He let that thick hair grow down his back and wore it like a tail.
    And the boy took on the habits of rock-the slow, slow ways of rock, until the mine crew felt he knew the rocks better than anyone. He worked the mines, holding with his thin strong arms the slusher that spun against the clock, burrowing into rock, slushing ore from the heart of the earth.
    The men he worked with, down in those mines, came to trust him, and ask him, “Is it safe today?” And though he was young enough to be the son of  miners, they looked into his face and he took their question and drifted  through tunnels, felt  mine backs, touched cribbing and rock bolts, stopping time as he searched for an answer. Then he would give a shy, sly smile and he’d say, “Yup, it’s safe today.”

    His mama said he was born impatient, born early, forcing his twin also to look at daylight before her time. His twin sister’s eyes were weak; she could barely see. He could see too far. At four years old he took apart a broken clock and repaired it. Only, when it ran, it ran backwards. Later, his mama wondered if he had been the one to break the clock, wanting to stop time, to step aside from human habits.

    Now, to the girl it is simple. A human boy has a human body, and walks the earth in human ways. But the boy grows more and more impatient, frustrated. He is trapped, only trapped in the skin of a human. To him it is simple: with desire a human can fly free, soar over the canyon like a red-tailed hawk, be the stratified rock with movements slow as forever. The boy sees he is everything: He is a being who slips into a form of a human, of a coyote, a bird, a rock, the wind.
    What the boy does not understand it why he cannot leave his human form with the ease of a thought. Oh, in his dreams, he soars. But in the morning he wakes to the gravity of a sleeping body and pounds his fist against his thigh, his chest.
    Sometimes, for days, the boy does not eat, refusing to add mass to his body, considering if he spurns it he will sooner be able to reach his ideal.
    For a while, after they are lovers, the boy forgets to dream and in his sleep wraps around his lover, content with human ways. But soon his impatience returns. The girl also learns impatience. Why can’t he see how simple it is to be a human?
    The lovers begin to argue, to grow apart. Now there are only moments, moments when they curve to each other in the  night, only moments when the boy’s longing disappears.
    One morning the boy awakens, tormented. He fills a skin bag with water and leaves his lover. Instead of going to the mine, he walks into the desert. Past the canyon where the river flows, past familiar barrel cactus and creosote bush, into arroyos and up onto the desert floor. He walks under the sun until the water is gone, and he walks until he stumbles and no longer can draw himself to his feet. There, he lies. He folds his boy arms around his chest and closes his eyes. He stretches out his long legs and smiles into the desert sun. Finally, the noy is able to stop time. And as night falls, he travels with planets freed from orbits. Finally and at last, he is everything.
    He is everything except a certain boy in the arms of a certain girl.
    That night, waves of sorrow shake the girl’s body. She dreams. Inside her dream and outside it she cries. Then like a skimming hawk she floats over the ridge where her lover lies. She folds herself over him, and in the shadow of wings they embrace.
    “You will not mourn,” he whispers, “because this, too, is life. I see how foolish I was, but only now is my wisdom sure. One day go to a place where the river bends, and there I shall sing for you.”
    The girl wakes from her dream. She walks across the desert, in and out of arroyos, past barrel cactus and creosote bush. She walks exactly as far as did the boy and comes to the place where he lies. She makes a travois of tamarisk branches from a nearby canyon, and drags the body of her lover to the burial place of his family.

    There’s a place where a river bends, a wall of rock carved smooth by water. When spring swells the river, a whirlpool sings against the canyon. A girl stands at the canyon rim and listens to the simplicity of a river carving itself to the sea. She smiles at the innocent song of water and rock, of wind and wings, of lips and breath, of death swirled into life, again and again.

5 comments:

Amina said...

This story is so beautifull. This made my day thanku :)

Chem said...

Goose bumps... I can hear the longing of the boy. I feel it in my bones. I am never alone in my quest to be one with the universe.

Anonymous said...

it's too abstract, it doesn't really mean anything, you must infer everything. it's a lazy story.

Anonymous said...

So beautiful. I have never shed a tear like this before. Great furry story. 10/10.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of my furry friend... she felt like an animal more than a human!