Familial

a/n: I've been posting my work too much, I know. I was excited by this though. Flash fiction, comparable to Postmortem.

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I watch her at night. She is very peaceful. The battening down of her chest, the smells of her sleep like the threat of summer rain. I watch her twitch as her muscles relax, untwining. She sleeps without sheets – it is summer time. Or the end of it. It is fall, actually. You can see the leaves outside. Turning to flushes, thrushes. You can even see their colors at night, at least tonight as the moon is full, mid-gown. It is fall and, except for me, things are changing. The dirt is even changing. You put your hand in the dirt in the summer and it is dry and speaks drily with the bad joke of drought. And now you put your hand into the dirt and it stays under your fingernails and is moist and cool. Fall comes up from the earth the way lightning does. Lightning does not originate in the clouds. It comes from the ground, like a naked leg kicked from sheets.
She is in the moonlight and her sheets. I am at her door. The door is mostly closed. I am looking through the crack between the door and the frame at her. Her room is next to mine. She is so quiet when she sleeps except that she talks sometimes. Nonsense, always. It sounds like she is saying something – she has the same cadences, inflections, all the intelligence of some natural language. Behind a wall, like in my bedroom where I lay and look at the ceiling at night, it sounds like she is talking to me. Finally talking to me in secret tones. Her mouth against the wall, saying brian brian it's okay i understand and it's okay.
Tomorrow is Sunday.
She and I will go to church with grandpa and grandma. I like the hymns. What is it about sung hymns. Rising from deep in souls like lightning from hot ground, or cool moist fall. I do not sing the hymns of course. I cannot sing like she does. And besides, I can't hear her sing when I sing. Her child's voice, high and shivering like an unrid horse. The hymns rising, high.
And then I want to cry. If there is God, it is in her voice when she sings hymns at the old Baptist church on Peach street.
I think about God sometimes. I think about where he is, like in a voice. I do not care for the modern interpretations of heaven. But it is a very popular idea here. I can walk outside on nights like this – still warm and insistant – and I can feel the neighborhood wishing for heaven. For such finite bright beings, we are so in love with the dreary idea of eternity. Eternity is selfish idea. Like wanting her all for myself when I know that that cannot happen, that she will marry one day in the old Baptist church on peach street, wedding train trailing like a seacoast, and then she will move away.
Maybe it is not that we are in love with the idea of eternity.
It is that we are terrified of inconclusive ends.
We are terrified of not telling her how we feel, especially at night, watching at her as she sleeps. We do this to ourselves. I do this to myself. There is moonlight, rounded with her skin like a shoulderblade. She shifts, mumbles, nearly rises as if gaining wakefulness. I do not shut the door. I would like her to see me here. I would like her to open her eyes and look at me and be perfectly serene as she looks at me. She would blink and we would stare, like noctambulants startled by each other in the night.
We would maintain the silence, except for the sound of crickets
falling.
Enter Juliet, contemplating the nature of a name by moonlight. The barricades of a name, a surname. People separated by names. What else are people separated by. Walls, doors, night, sleep, genes. The word unnatural. It is a word in the bible, in God. But what is more natural than two bodies. The tandem flesh of rubbed spirits. These collided orbits. A want, a need, fulfilled. A moment's bond in the upstream struggle. But words like this and names. People split like wood.
It is almost strange to think that she has the same parts of a woman.
That she is not somehow different. Set apart.
But she is not, so how is she unnatural when she sings the hymns and sleeps and is the same as any other woman.
In an earthly sense, what is evil of me standing at her door at night as the leaves turn like tilled earth, except for a surname, wondered about by moonlight?
What is unnatural, except for infinity, and small ideas like unnaturalness, and sin.

I almost love your short stories...I adore your poetry, though. I almost wished your story would flow better, but that was just my first impression. On second thought, I liked the fact that the rhythm (does that make any sense) reminded me of the halting voice of a young-ish boy. Everything was beautiful: your images, like always, were exquisitely original and poignant. So yeah, I liked it.
Sincerely,
Rose

Hey Kylan -

You have a right to be excited about this. I feel excited by it; I feel excited by the unravelling of it. I have little time, so will (try to!) be brief. Collate my thoughts.

I rather like this carryover of ideas from various writings of yours, but what makes it more entertaining here is the sheer scandal of the relationship - it's riveting. Brother and sister. Twins, perhaps. Mixed up love. The unnaturalness of it (and a great reference to Shakespeare - instead of people divided by name, people thrust too close by name, too close to have that kind of relationship, feeling). How unnaturalness is itself unnatural. The recurring concept of eternity/infinity/conclusion/fulfilment by desire, love, call it what you will. And yet, the incompleteness of it, religiously - the spiritual incompleteness in something so real and fleshed. And again, your paradoxes: religious completeness / eternity / infinity is also unfulfilling, unnatural and natural at once. He loves her; he wants her - a possessive, consuming sort of love. That restlessness and unnaturalness of it drives this so beautifully.

See? I can be concise when I want to.

Specifics on style - it's interesting that I felt the story was much more verb/action/character driven than it was description-driven (by which I mean there was less of the beating about the bush with poetry here), but that it still retained a certain restless stillness, a kind of an axis that it revolved around. Even so, I noticed flow issues all throughout - too many small sentences, I'd say, and not enough longer ones. Made an otherwise smooth piece seem a tad jumpy, which I didn't like. The three-full-stops-per-line were really annoying me partway through the first para and continued to do so throughout.

Also:

summer rain. I watch her twitch as her muscles relax, untwining. She sleeps without sheets – it is summer time. Or the end of it. It is fall, actually. You can see the leaves outside. Turning to flushes, thrushes. You can even see their colors at night, at least tonight as the moon is full, mid-gown. It is fall and, except for me, things are changing. The dirt is even changing. You put your hand in the dirt in the summer

One of those 'summer' words has got to go.

The dirt is even changing. You put your hand in the dirt in the summer and it is dry and speaks drily with the bad joke of drought. And now you put your hand into the dirt and it stays under your fingernails and is moist and cool. Fall comes up from the earth the way lightning does.

Didn't find this particularly relevant in light of everything else in the story. There's no mention of dirt elsewhere. Too short a piece to allow for a tangent of this kind (and yes, I can quite clearly see the theme you might have portrayed: dirt/sin/unnatural love = religious uncleanliness etc - but no time for this symbol to creep in here: the 'unnatural' bit does well enough itself.)

I like the hymns. What is it about sung hymns. Rising from deep in souls like lightning from hot ground, or cool moist fall. I do not sing the hymns of course. I cannot sing like she does. And besides, I can't hear her sing when I sing. Her child's voice, high and shivering like an unrid horse. The hymns rising, high.

And then I want to cry. If there is God, it is in her voice when she sings hymns at the old Baptist church on Peach street.

That repetition of hymns and singing was annoying me. Made the paragraph seem like it could have easily been reduced to a single line. Get rid of something, at the very least.

Baptist church on peach street

Uncapitalised 'peach' intended?

We would maintain the silence, except for the sound of crickets

falling.

Wonderful visual writing there, but it would have been much stronger if the crickets didn't feel like a throw-it-in-since-I-like-it image and if they actually counted for something, symbolically. I shouldn't think that's too hard, what with the ease with which you seem to tie everything else in.

The word unnatural. It is a word in the bible, in God.

I don't understand, thematically. God is 'unnatural'?

What is unnatural, except for infinity, and small ideas like unnaturalness, and sin.

At first I thought I didn't like the clunkiness of this, but I rather think I do. It's sort of hard to pull apart, gnaws at the reader the way the whole spooled-out drama gnaws at them. And I sort of like ending on a sharp note of internal conflict, here. It makes me think more about the problem than any solutions you could possibly come up with.

Yes. That's what I meant before, I think. This piece is incredibly close to being 'perfect' in the sense that it will be tight, complete, no loose end with a few brushups. And yet, it is wonderfully real in the sense that what it portrays, essentially, is a kind of imperfection, a conflict of values. The problem is laid out in completeness. We are left with incompleteness, left with no hint of a solution, just an irrepressible need to do something about it. In 'undertows' I think that's what I was talking about with the paradox of writing, and the reader-text relationship.

Lovely piece,


Navi

Is it just the barren drought of excitement in the general fiction section for the past week or two? This work is exciting to me.

She is very peaceful.

The "very," used so early, sounds rather infantile, trying to imagine the appearance of more peaceful as opposed to regular peaceful. But then it's in direct conflict with the sophistication of "the battening down of her chest."

Agreed with Navita about the time spent on dirt. It's immediately overshadowed by the lightning. Especially the line about the "naked leg."

She sleeps without sheets...She is in the moonlight and her sheets

Just a simple inconsistency. Also, her sleeping without the sheets kind of goes against the image we get of her "naked leg kicked from sheets."

Behind a wall, like in my bedroom where I lay and look at the ceiling at night, it sounds like she is talking to me. Finally talking to me in secret tones. Her mouth against the wall, saying brian brian it's okay i understand and it's okay.

The subtle reveal is eerie and lovely and telling.

wedding train trailing like a seacoast, and then she will move away.

Love it. Just enough of a glimpse of a paradise that won't exist for him.

watching at her

Are you sure you meant "watching at her?"

The barricades of a name, a surname. People separated by names. What else are people separated by. Walls, doors, night, sleep, genes.

I'm not so sure of this. This starts to go against what you want to achieve. I'm guessing she and the narrator have the same name and the same/similar genes. So that wouldn't separate them. The narrator has presented an argument against himself and the point becomes mystified.

In an earthly sense, what is evil of me standing at her door at night

A great wrap up and a segue into the end.

In places the pacing begins to sound like a machine gun. For example, here:

Enter Juliet, contemplating the nature of a name by moonlight. The barricades of a name, a surname. People separated by names. What else are people separated by. Walls, doors, night, sleep, genes. The word unnatural. It is a word in the bible, in God. But what is more natural than two bodies. The tandem flesh of rubbed spirits. These collided orbits. A want, a need, fulfilled. A moment's bond in the upstream struggle. But words like this and names. People split like wood.

It's a rat-tat-tat of commas and periods. We don't get more than 5 or 6 words together before we're stopped by another.

Generally, though, the overall pacing is splendid, even though the narrator doesn't move a single step. Not too slow or ponderous or caught up in tangents. The feeling oozes from every word. I dig it.