Sit Through the Sermon

Sit through the sermon and walk home in the rain,

Eat a cold dinner and shake off the pain,

But pain is such a heavy thing, laid hard around your heart.

Sealed tight around the edges and you can’t find a place to start,

To peel it up and breath again, your vision growing dim,

Drowning in your emptiness unable still to swim.

Walk through the field and part the mist,

In early morning haze.

Feel the tears well up inside, and remember his smiling face.

Cross the creek without a sound, and finally look around.

Back in the place where you met him first,  

How did you end up here?

You feel the grief in the hardest way,

And break down into tears.

Sit through the sermon without hearing a word,

Another week has gone by in a blur.

You walk home in the rain and sit in the window,

Let the rain soak through your clothes.

Doubling over you gasp for breath,

The sobs break through like daggers.

Jump down from the window,

Take off at a run.

Doesn’t matter if you know what you’re running from.

You’ll sit through the sermon and walk home in the rain

Eat a cold dinner and shake off the pain.

Eventually you’ll breathe again,

But you’ll never feel the same.  

It’s a part of you now, a new structure within you,

And it makes you feel overdrawn.

But you’ll grow to surround it and in time,

You’ll see where you went wrong.

Story #10

Standing up, she looked at the table, everything was ready. She took down three of the blue tin plates and was moving towards the table, when she looked over and nearly dropped them. It was the boy standing at the end of the hall, not her Grandfather. He was barefoot, and the bandages on his torso and head had small spots of red on them. He was staring straight ahead, out the front door, holding perfectly still. Veronica straightened carefully, and set the plates down on the table. The small noise turned his head, and they locked eyes. His face was white, and his eyes were wary. She wiped her hands on her jeans, and pulled out a chair, gesturing to it. He walked towards it slowly, in his level smooth stride, and sat down, eyes still on her. Veronica pointed to herself.

“I’m Veronica.” He looked at her, not understanding. She pointed again. “Veronica.” He paused, and nodded slowly. Pointing to himself, he spoke in his deep, strange voice.

“Gi.” They stared into each other’s eyes, not sure what to do next. At last she pointed to the bandages on his head.

“I need to change those.” He looked back at her, and she knew she’d just have to do it and hope he didn’t hit her. She stepped forward and reached forward, his hand shot up and grabbed her wrist. He looked up at her, and she down at him, and she made herself stay calm. She repeated the words as coolly as she could.

“I need to change those, Gi.” At the sound of his name, the boy looked at her in one long glance, and dropped her wrist. She let her breath out, and hoped he wouldn’t notice she was trembling. She unwound the linen and set it on the chair next to her. She examined the wound, and touched it gently with her fingertips, he winced, but didn’t pull away. The bleeding was stopped, and it was scabbed over, but there was bruising around it and the gash wasn’t very small. She turned and put a pot of fresh water on the stove, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. It was eerie how silent he was, and how well his eyes communicated when he couldn’t speak her language. Not for the first time, she observed the strangeness of the situation. On a normal day, she would have gotten up, eaten breakfast with her grandfather, fed the animals and set to work in the garden, and whatever else needed to be done, but things were different today. She turned, and found Gi staring at the food on the table. She didn’t know if Grandfather had fed him before bed, but it was unlikely. She silently filled a glass with water and set it before him. He looked at it, half suspiciously and half with curiosity. She pulled up a chair in front of him and sat down. He looked at her, and then picked up the glass and took a drink. He drained the glass. She picked it up and filled it for him again. It was so strange to be moving so quietly. No talking, just looks. She sat back down, and waited for him to finish drinking, and then unwound the bandage around his chest. He looked down, face blank. This whole time, he hadn’t smiled, or spoken at all aside from his name. His body was long, compact, and lean. She wondered what would happen if someone hit him. They would probably be the one to go flying. Veronica’s eyes flicked up to his face, and back to his wounds. She decided it had to be done, and got up. He watched her as she opened the pantry, and took down a bundle of dried herbs and the mortar, and set to work making a poultice. She could never remember the name of the herb, but it was always what they used when she or Grandfather got hurt. There were a lot of things higher on her list of things she wanted to do than rub herbs on a stranger’s chest, but she took the glob on her fingers, and fell to her knees in front of him. He looked startled, but didn’t stop her as she began applying it to various deep cuts on his chest and stomach. She heard him suck in his breath, and winced for him. She knew from experience that it stung in an open wound, but she didn’t look up and meet his eyes. Long years of living on a farm had taught her not to say her apprehensions out loud. Better to approach it cautiously and explain with your actions that you weren’t sure, than to go in confidently and be wrong. Either way it had to be done, and she refused to allow the chance of being wrong to stop her from getting things done. That was how she did most things. Careful thinking, followed by a headlong calculated rush into the flames, and an inward acknowledgement that she very well may be wrong. Her fine red eyebrows curved in concentration. Finally, she finished and stood up. He had been staring hard at the floor against the pain, and she saw his fist clenching the edge of the table, knuckles white. He looked up at her, and she smiled at him. His stone mouth curved into a deep smile that lit up his eyes and his whole hard face softened. She felt herself blushing and turned away quickly before he noticed. Taking the bandages, she turned them to a whiter spot on the strips and reapplied them. She knew they weren’t really clean, but they were better than nothing. He was still clenching the table, and his jaw. His face expressed nothing, but the shimmering green eyes showed his pain.  She finished, and straightened. She avoided his eye as she turned towards the stove, fiddling with something that didn’t need to be fiddled with. Then she heard his voice, slowly, and unsurely, ask,

“Ver-onica?” She looked at him, surprised. He took it for an answer, and gestured towards the food, looking sheepish and questioning. She laughed inwardly. Oh duh, poor guy, of course he needs to eat.  She nodded vigorously and smiled warmly, pointing to the food. He grinned, and nodded thankfully. She felt awkward as he started to eat, and decided not to wait for her Grandfather to get up. Gi was intent on eating, and it was probably safe to leave him here for a few minutes, so she moved quietly towards the door, and closed it behind her. She took a deep breath of the morning air, and grinned to herself. This is really weird. This is REALLY really weird.

.....

Story #9

Veronica woke up the next morning with a stiff neck. She yawned, and looked at the mechanical alarm clock on her night stand. It was seven, which meant she’d gotten approximately six and a half hours of sleep. Despite the exhaustion of the night before, she hadn’t slept for half an hour after she’d gone to bed. She stood up from her creaking bed, and curled her toes painfully on the cold wood floor. She looked down, and sure enough, one foot was swollen. It didn’t look too bad, but it was bruised and purple. She stretched, and rubbed her face with both hands. She sat down in front of her table. It served double purpose as vanity and desk, but during summer when school was out, it was just a vanity. She looked in the mirror, eyes still half closed. Sunlight streamed in the window over her bed and illuminated her wild red hair. Stretching again, she pushed the unruly locks away from her face and leaned on the table, staring herself in the eye. She knew that Grandfather would be stirring soon, and she needed to get downstairs and get breakfast ready, there were chores to be done. But she couldn’t seem to make herself move, she was wondering how the boy was doing. All night she’d had nightmares about the green eyes, and her door rattling in the night. At last she took out her brush and brushed her hair out, and braided it over her shoulder. She pulled off the dingy shorts and tank top she slept in, and put on her jeans and a fresh shirt. This was Tuesday, which meant that laundry day wasn’t for two days. Her room was nice and neat. It had a sloping ceiling, since it was technically in the attic, a low bed, a dresser on one side of the room with a laundry hamper, a vanity and a nightstand, and that was it. The only light after dark was the lamp on the nightstand, but it felt homey and clean. The yellow wallpaper always made it feel light, and she liked it. The rest of the house was shared, but this was the place she could always count on being alone. She took one last look around, and went for the door. It rattled, and she remembered she’d locked it the night before. She unlocked it, stepped into the hall, and closed the door as silently as she could behind her. The other room upstairs was empty like the one the strange boy was staying in, and the door was always kept closed. She didn’t know what happened to her parents, or why she’d been sent to the farm, but her earliest memory was of the first night she’d spent there, when her Grandfather had told her gently which room was hers, and that the other room had belonged to her mother. Oh how scared she’d been that first night, walking by herself with her armload of blankets and sleeping in the strange bed in the strange house, with strange noises. She walked down the now familiar hall, silently in her bare feet, and crept down the creaking wooden steps. These days she’d been trying to pull more of the load for her Grandfather, and not to wake him up in the morning. Still, it seemed like he never slept past seven thirty. It was her job to make breakfast, milk the cow, gather the eggs and feed the horses, unless Grandfather got up first, then he’d feed the horses.

Veronica hauled the milk pail in one hand, and the basket of eggs in the other, and shifted the weight carefully as she opened the front door. She was still as quiet as she could, but ever since the storm last winter when the screen door hadn’t been fastened properly, it made an unnecessary amount of noise when you opened and closed it. The house was still silent, except for the ticking of the clock in the living room. She set the pail and the basket on the smooth rectangular table and started on breakfast. She took down a cast iron pan from the wall, and turned on the stove. The propane caught with a puff, and blue flames licked the black bottom of the pan. She took a spoon of bacon grease from the bean can next to the stove and plopped it into the pan, watching it melt into a snapping, spitting puddle. She took the eggs from the table and cracked six of them into the pan, tossing the brown shells into the bowl on the counter to go to the chickens later. She broke the eggs with a spatula and scrambled them. While they were cooking she put on a pot of coffee and took care of the milk. They did have a small refrigerator, but it was only for the things that were inconvenient to always be fetching from the cellar. Milk, eggs, and some vegetables always stayed in the house, but anything else you had to get from the cellar outside. It served both to keep the food from the garden, the cheese and canned goods fresh, and as a storm shelter during tornado season. She opened the door to the small pantry and looked inside. After scanning the shelves, she pulled out a jar of pickled herrings, and set it on the table. They seldom ate things like that, since they couldn’t be grown and if you wanted more you had to go to town and buy it, but since they had a guest, she decided it was alright to be a little extravagant. She set the eggs on a hot pad on the table, along with the coffee and herring, and sat down to wait. She took an old newspaper out of the burn-bin in the living room and sipped her coffee. The house was silent and peaceful, the sunlight streamed in through the east window, and with the yellow curtains at the windows and the shutters thrown open, it was warm and welcoming. Veronica set down her paper, and leaned forward onto the table, chin on fist, staring out the window. She closed her eyes and loved the feeling of the sun on her face and hair. She heard a door open in the hall, and her head turned.

…..

Song