A white mushroom blooms; trees splinter and break apart; much devastation.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
1. socks rub against the carpet and spray out little sparks as he begins to pitch forward.
2. the impact force against bones smacking the steps of the stairs isn't nearly strong enough to break them, but it can rip red rashes along the skin.
3. he hits his head against the hardwood when he crashes into the bottom of the stairs, and rubs the bump that slowly forms as he pulls himself up.
4. wiping a stray tear or two from his eyes, he winces and tries to put on a smile - he thinks he has to look like a man.
5. she hears the commotion and pokes her head out of the dining room; he waves, and she sighs and goes back to her work - moron.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
These are the men who sink into their couches and are fed spoonfuls of mush by frothing babies who scream blasphemy! when they hear so much as a word out of place.
These are the men who tipped to the right side of the boat and plunged into the ocean, but pulled out their crosses, stood on them, and refused to believe they were sinking while they, sinners, cast stones at the people who sailed away on liferafts looking for a bright horizon.
These are the men who've never sniffed fresh paper, flicked through the pages eagerly, and learned to love the written word like wise men do (unless, of course, the words come dripping in tabasco sauce from babies disguised with the masks of men).
And so I will not listen to them when they tell me to praise the iron heart and the stupid leader who wields it.
Ay Dios, nos perdona
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
When they tore down the house, we (my sisters and brothers and I) found a pale white flower nestled beneath now-broken floorboards; we guessed it had been there for years, kept alive by the steady dripping of water from the leaky plumbing in the kitchen sink that had doomed the house in the first place (and so we suspected that the spirit of the house had gone to the flower).
We dug it out, stuck it in a pot, and passed it between us, so the flower would travel to a new pair of hands every year regardless of the distance between us, and each one of us painted a circle on a petal of the flower out of his or her favorite color.
We were young, but even we knew that it would have to die eventually. But when, despite the many times someone forgot to give it water or food, it survived and kept its faint white glow in the nighttime, we were elated - it was our nightlight, our green and white thread, our birthday gift and present.
It saw hats tossed into the air, stethoscopes lining the walls, the inside of airplane cargo holds, white-capped mountains spewing smoke, newborns placed in their tiny cribs, nursing homes littered with wheelchairs, and rested atop funeral casket after funeral casket.
It only watches over me now. I see their names and faces in each of the circles, and halos sprout from the flower's faint glow. It catches my tears and shakes gently in the breeze. Perhaps it's taken their souls too; perhaps they're all in the house now, in their rooms, waiting for the final pair of soft footprints to climb up the stairs, open the doors, and give an embrace to last for the rest of time.
I look forward to it.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
The ship crashed onto the shore and sprayed sand into the trees; the first few men to come aboard found the captain alone, slumped against the wheel, cap casting a shadow over his eyes and his arms loosely clutching two spokes, keeping his knees just inches above the deck.
No time to waste - they didn't want Death to escape, sprouting from his body in a swarm of flies and maggots that would sting and eat their hearts as well. The men sent boys back to town and laid out the captain on the sand, heaping block after block of wood on top.
The passing of a torch and the pile flamed, spewing smoke through the palm fronds. The captain's wife arrived just in time to smell burning flesh and the skin flaking off an arm that poked out of the wood. She screamed and reached out, but they held her back - a final touch, kiss, embrace, was not worth getting herself ill or burning herself on the pyre (no matter how much she protested otherwise).
And she still visits the beach every year when she's certain that no one else will watch her beyond the moon and the stars, whom she pleads will take the bottles she throws into the sea and carry them to the depths where good sailor's souls lurk, though she's never had an answer yet.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
you never forget the city, especially the moments when you hide behind a wall, the windows around you exploding against submachine gun fire, and then you have to grab your rifle, wheel around and - crack! crack! - there goes a man, falling off the balcony and crashing against the cloth roof of a market stall (the only thing it sells now being death, since all the living either cleared out their goods or let planes clear it out for them).
even when you jump onto the caravan's roof (thanking god that He's pulling you out of hell) and crouch down between blankets, you still hear the sounds of screaming outside your bedroom door while you cower beneath the bedframe, up until the camouflage glove reaches for you, drags you out, and tells you how the bigwigs argued over nothing and did nothing and now, now there's some tyrants to take care of (but seeming to forget the last dictators were rebels themselves).
i guess you never leave the city.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck; there's a pigeon in the chimney, screeching and flapping about while spilling ashes from god knows how many fires made in the wintertime for us to sit around, dipping crackers into our hot chocolate to eat, and my family wants me to stick my head up there to chase it out with a broom that's always too short.
And the pigeon scatters soot onto my head, turning Christmas memories into weapons that plunge into my nose like fighter planes, make my lungs recoil like they've breathed in cigarettes, and cause my eyes to redden and water. You know, when it isn't shooting worse things at me.
Guess what? I can't pull my head back, my arms are trapped against the hot brick walls, and nobody else even knows there's a problem; I've got to put on a smile, hoping I can yank myself out before the pigeon lands on my face (because that's when everyone pays attention, and I'm not a big fan of Schadenfreude).
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
I wonder what it says about me when I find myself most free if I put on a fox mask and howl out my song to the world.
Is there something buried beneath pink flesh and tiny eyes that will never rise to the surface without a focus?
Am I lying to myself about who I am because I'm afraid that no one would dare to look at the real me, wrapped in blankets and building fences to keep out all the neighbors?
Or maybe it's both, as though knowing the reason would ever have stopped me in the first place.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
buried in the snow, etched in the weathered marble - yo quise morir.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
When you would count the snowflakes drifting onto the windowsill, he would sidle up and tell you, "baby, every snowflake is unique; then again, so is everything else.
And if everything is unique, what is?"
You never peered between his lines (and they always hovered in the air when he spoke), or you would've seen the gray hand grasping his skull when you swayed on the balcony, his hands on your hips, his eyes mirrors instead of windows, gilding your reflection and throwing the sun on it, and the two of you kissed like the missiles had just landed (damn North Korea) and you didn't have the time or room for anything else but emotion.
He thought he was trapped in a painting where his cheeks were rosy, his eyes were blue, and he was surrounded by waves of pallid and gray people frozen in place.
And he thought the artist had suffered a stroke, slumping over in their chair before they could paint to life the passerby to caress him.
And he threatened to find the eraser to turn it on himself, a final act of defiance by the man who never knew he'd drained the color from himself and had thrown it into the prisms that made rainbows to keep the rest of the painting alive.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
the ice breathes. it gasps to life on blades of grass before the sun tinges the sky blue; it crawls across windows in the morning, creeping through cracks and soaking spiders who try to nest among it and catch prey; melts into puddles in the afternoon, thanks to the barrage of arrows Apollo sends as he flies on his chariot; and seeps into the earth at night, promising revenge against the tyrant as it rebuilds under Artemis's watchful eye.
who among us can blame it for wanting to escape a death that always comes for it in the end? each of us casts our stars up, hoping they stick to the walls of the world before the scythe sticks in our chests. though, then again, we are the ones in hot tubs, shriveling at the slightest piece of ice drifting in from around us, praying to Apollo for his warmth and cursing his sister.
and it is hard to love the enemy.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
A man on the street once told me to know myself, to find whatever boxes can fit the writhing mass of my mind, cracks and all.
I didn't think that a giant would come to stomp on all but the most rigid boxes, leer at me through rose-tinted glasses, and tell me that my mind can only be bordered by lines.
But if David could kill the Philistine Goliath, so can I - I will smash his glasses with my stones, tear out his Achilles' heels, and leave him to lick his wounds while I plant my mind where it will best grow into something that I can understand and count on when the giant comes back (and he always will).
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
If you caught me when I was a kid, when I adamant that Pluto was a planet despite what they (everyone) said, and told me that the man supposed to be tending the trees was chopping them down and leaving them to rot so he could stuff dollar bills into his wallet and make the world his personal gas chamber, full of carbon dioxide and sulfur hexaflouride, I would've never believed that kind of evil existed outside of the TV screen (though I was a shy kid, and I probably would've just stammered or looked down at my shoes in response).
Now that I've figured out it takes man to make bitter chocolate sweet, and I've cut myself from the process, I know where evil lurks, and I want to shout loud enough for its red-eyed face to poke out from its soundproof room and hear my battle cry -
Science is my God; burn the heretics.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
I can't understand you. We live in the same household, play the same video games, follow our parents' many rules (and hide when we're breaking them), but there's a gap between us that I know we'll never bridge.
I'm only stroking my ego if I say that I'm smarter, but our minds aren't the same - I will always see equations on the walls of my room, hear the Moonlight Sonata in my sleep, and the corners of my mind will fold together searching for ever greater knowledge. To you, e = mc^2 is always going to fog your brain, you remember the lyrics of pop songs for irony's sake, and heaven forbid you have to remember Punnet squares.
And it kills me that I can't put together the pieces of the puzzle that is your brain, all because the mind that wants to know you is the reason that it can't. I can only try, but at least I feel the same way about everything else.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
And here is my life's work stretched out on the operating table, pleading for me through a single eye to stitch the skin back in place, yank out the appendix and toss it away (it wasn't good for anything anyways), and stick on a second arm and eye.
And I'm covered in blood, my scalpel inches away from flesh. The voice at the back of my head asks if I will make a Frankenstein out of misshapen, discolored parts; something to follow around and tell people that isn't what I meant, at all.
And if I have to tell the people who whisper into my ear the faint praises and damnations that make and break my mornings, that isn't what I meant, at all.
I turn the scalpel on myself like Ajax and his sword.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
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