“Do you know that Little has a tattoo?”
“Really? I guess I’m not shocked. What is it? Or dare I ask,
where
is it?”
“Two black wings right in the middle of her back. To get her up to heaven. Because the only man she ever loved is there. She is going to tell him off and then kiss him like no one’s ever been kissed.”
Mother leaned her head up to the sky and laughed. “That would be something to see.”
I thought of those small wings, growing limp and saggy on Little’s wrinkled back as the decades passed. “Do you mind if I go say one last good-bye?"
There was a grimace in her eyes as her smile retreated. “I guess that’s okay. But it’s late. Don’t stay long.”
I watched her puzzled expression as I stood and turned left, away from Boulder Bend and Nathan. “I’ll be home as soon as I’m done.” If Sarah was right –
let Sarah be right!
– I’d see him in the morning. Morning was a deep, warm longing in my stomach.
The moon’s confused gaze followed me to Pilgrim’s Point, laying a broken path of light across the uneven ground. Before I made it to the back door I called out without restraint, like Darcy. “Little!” The night shook with the sudden sound and high overhead a bird burst from a tree in a wild flap of feathers. The sound felt good in my throat, filled it with words instead of waiting tears. “Little!” I shouted again and rapped her back door sharp enough to wake her, living or dead. The curtain over the window shook as she pulled the door open and stood in front of me.
She didn’t look surprised to see me. She didn’t ask. Didn’t admonish. Didn’t joke. She waited, her face set in a sober frown. Before I could speak one word the brewing storm shattered inside of me and water, saltier than the sea, washed down my face. She pursed her lips in sympathy, the wrinkles falling into each other across her puckered face, but she didn’t interrupt the loss washing over me. Didn’t try to save me from it. “I came because …”
The wind gave a mighty push across my body and wrapped me in the fresh spray of the ocean. Like a quilt. Like words curling around me. Like ghosts reaching out their insubstantial hands to comfort the stark, isolated, magnificent suffering that wound its barbs around my very breaths.
I looked at her eyes, swirling with the same stormy waves, the same hidden currents, as the fathomless ocean. And in that moment I knew that Newell had seen. Whatever excuses he invented or reasons he gave himself, he must have noticed the blue flames lapping through the icy whites of her eyes.
“I have a story,” I whispered.
Charlotte Bronte. “Parting”, 1846
Dickinson, Emily. #198” An Awful Tempest Mashed the Air”,
The Complete Poems
, 1891
Collins, Billy. “Directions”
Art of Drowning
University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition, June 15, 1995
Frost, Robert. “Lodged”
West-Running Brook
, 1928
Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
Yale Review
, October 1923
Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
This Side of Paradise
, 1920
Hermann Hesse. "Lying in Grass" / "Im Grase Liegend"
Poems
, 1915
Translated by James Wright and published in English in 1971.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “Changed”
Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes
, 1876–79.
Moore, Thomas.
Moore's Irish Melodies
, 1876–79.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “A Psalm of Life”
Knickerbocker Magazine
, October 1838
Oliver, Mary. "The Journey",
Dream Work
, 1986
William Shakespeare. Julius Ceasar, 1599
Shelley, Percy. “Ozymandias”
Examiner
, January 11, 1818
Tagore, Rabindranath. “Vocation” 1913
Tennyson, Alfred. “Break Break Break”
Collection of Poems
, 1842
“Abandon Hope all ye who enter here.”
Dante’s Inferno, Divine Comedy. Inferno (Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem
Divine Comedy
.
“like a thunderbolt…”
Tennyson “The Eagle: A Fragment” was first published in 1851, when it was added to the seventh edition of Tennyson’s
Poems
, which had itself been published first in 1842
“When the half gods go, the gods arrive”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
. New York, Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1899
“No coward soul is mine”
Emily Brontë,
The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë
, ed. Clement Shorter, collected by C. W. Hatfield (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923
With love and gratitude I thank my daughter for giving Jennifer the breath of life,
My husband, for giving me the greatest love story,
My little elf, for taking long rides in the country with me while I searched for the right words,
My sister, who is the sole reason I finished,
My nana, who already flew home,
My writing group- John, Danyelle, Keisha and Lisa- you are true believers in the impossible,
Tristi for her editing suggestions, (any and all mistakes are mine and not the lapse of any other)
My test readers, for their honest feedback and willingness to help,
And every person who gave me a kind word to fill my frequently- depleted ego.
I have the greatest friends on earth.
A writer is never really happy with a finished product, but a writer is always grateful for a finished product. Thank you.