suffering each invisible star [ coyote & pigeon jb ]

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

C   A   L   L   U   M

P  I  G  E  O  N

My job has been to follow the good remains, to collect the bones from the slaughter and bring them home. I like the music they make when they drop into the stockpot dry, and even though the process is repetitive and mundane, the bones never fall the same, and so the song never turns over its own notes the way I expect it to, and this small rebellion thrills me.

My mother and I have spent the last of the summer months standing hip to hip in the sweltering kitchen watching my father and Coyote come in from the field each day at dusk, and each time the horizon they appear from seems closer. My mother has seen the concern on my face and dismissed it, said, A steady diet of nothing makes you tough, Juliet, not dead.

But I think we’re all dead already, ghosts drifting down the streets of Five since the days got long, too long for us to grin and bear it.

After all, I’ve heard my father counting bullets, and I’ve held Coyote’s trembling hands in between my own until the shaking stopped, convinced I could do something to help him--I’d do anything, even take the shotgun down and out into the pastures myself but that’s not the help he wants, and I’ve been learning to be tough on nothing so I’ve shifted the safety each morning and passed it off, dutiful and patient, frozen in time to him on the front porch each day until the evening breaks and he returns home and there I am, ready to take it back and bandage his bloody, calloused hands.

I don't think we’re stupid enough to believe it can stay like this forever, but it’s nice to feed the delusion that we’ll live long enough to eat again, that there’s a real reason my mother and I keep boiling cattle bones down into stock, that the reason this routine will end will be something vague and undetermined, as if we'll just wake up one morning and it'll all be over, some line into the next world crossed in the middle of the night.

But it’s always sudden and definable if you’re paying attention, and what I know is that one moment we’re standing at the reaping together and I’m holding his hand and the next he’s already so far away from me it’s getting difficult to make my vision stay focused and keep the image of him sharp.

Perception is so fallible, even when it seems reliable at the start. When Coyote and I watch the stars at night, we know that you’ve got five good minutes, tops, before things start getting blurry—exhaustion, cloud cover, the stars simply moving farther apart—and then all bets are off.

So when they finally let me back to him, I immediately throw my arms around him and ignore how I can feel his skeleton trying to crawl out of his body. I ignore how close to the surface the bones of his back feel to my hands. For a moment, I’m distracted by this, thinking of how I could pluck them out, superficial. When I finally pull away from him, I take his face in both hands, rest my thumbs on the top of his cheekbones, say, Please come home to me, even if there’s nothing left here but me to come home to.

[ table: pogue ]