longer.
Speech,
movements,
expressions.
MAN AND WOMAN:
Now,
for a moment,
we sink.
Both not saying
the same words.
Not bewailing him,
for now,
but bewailing the music
of our previous life, the
wondrously simple, the
ease, the
face
free of wrinkles.
WOMAN:
But we promised each other,
we swore to be,
to ache,
to miss
him,
to live.
So what is it now
that makes you
suddenly tear away?
MAN:
After that night
a stranger came and grasped
my shoulders and said: Save
what is left.
Fight, try to heal.
Look into her eyes, cling
to her eyes, always
her eyes—
do not let go.
WOMAN:
Don’t go back there,
to those days. Do not
turn back your gaze.
MAN:
In that darkness I saw
one eye
weeping
and one eye
crazed.
A human eye,
extinguished,
and the eye
of a beast.
A beast half
devoured in the predator’s mouth,
soaked with blood,
insane,
peered out at me from your eye.
WOMAN:
The earth
gaped open,
gulped us
and disgorged.
Don’t go back
there, do not go,
not even one step
out of the light.
MAN:
I could not, I dared not
look into your eye,
that eye of
madness,
into your noneness.
WOMAN:
I did not see you,
I did not see
a thing,
from the human eye
or the eye
of the beast.
My soul was uprooted.
It was very cold then
and it is cold
now, too.
Come to sleep,
it’s late.
MAN:
For five years
we unspoke
that night.
You fell mute,
then I.
For you the quiet
was good,
and I felt it clutch
at my throat. One after
the other, the words
died, and we were
like a house
where the lights
go slowly out,
until a somber silence
fell—
WOMAN:
And in it
I rediscovered you,
and him. A dark mantle
cloaked the three of us,
enfolded us
with him, and we were mute
like him. Three embryos
conceived
by the bane—
MAN:
And together
we were born
on the other side,
without words,
without colors,
and we learned
to live
the inverse
of life.
(silence)
WOMAN:
See how
word by word
our confiding
is attenuated, macerated,
like a dream
illuminated
by a torch. There was
a certain miracle
within the quietude,
a secrecy
within the silence
that swallowed us up
with him. We were silent there
like him, there we spoke
his tongue.
For words—
how does the drumming
of words voice
his death?!
TOWN CHRONICLER: In the hush that follows her shout, the man retreats until his back touches the wall. Slowly, as if in his sleep, he spreads botharms out and steps along the wall. He circles the small kitchen, around and around her.
MAN:
Tell me,
tell me
about us
that night.
WOMAN:
I sense something
secret: you are tearing off
the bandages
so you may drink
your blood, provisions
for your journey to
there
.
MAN:
That night,
tell me
about us
that night.
WOMAN:
You
circle
around me
like a beast
of prey. You close
in on me
like a nightmare.
That night, that
night.
You want to hear about
that night.
We sat on these chairs,
you there, me here.
You smoked. I remember
your face came
and went in the smoke,
less and less
each time. Less
you, less
man.
MAN:
We waited
in silence
for morning.
No
morning
came.
No
blood
flowed.
I stood up, I wrapped you
in a blanket,
you gripped my hand, looked
straight into my eyes: the man
and woman
we had been
nodded farewell.
WOMAN:
No
wafted dark
and cold
from the walls,
bound my body,
closed and barred
my womb. I thought:
They are sealing
the home that once
was me.
MAN:
Speak. Tell me
more. What did we say?
Who spoke first? It was very quiet,
wasn’t it? I remember breaths.
And your hands twisting
together. Everything else
is erased.
WOMAN:
Cold, quiet fire burned
around us.
The world outside shriveled,
sighed, dwindled
into a single dot,
scant,
black,
malignant.
I thought: We must
leave.
I knew: There’s nowhere
left.
MAN:
The minute
it happened,
the minute
it became—
WOMAN:
In an instant we were cast out
to a land of exile.
They came at
Lynsay Sands
Debbie Fuller Thomas
Donna Augustine
Kristal Lim
Patricia Dusenbury
David Moody
Jennifer Harlow
Ava May
John Rickards
Philip Blood