to stand back up. My knees dug into the broken twigs and leaves as I sat upright. My vision blurred as I grew dizzy. To my utter terror, the humming sound drilled back into my ear once more. It was deafening; it sounded like screams instead of a song by now. With frantic eyes, I turned my head from side to side, and my eyes met a mass of darkened frames as jagged and crooked as the mountains that towered over me. My mouth flew open as I prepared myself to scream, but no sound came out at all. I could only stare in utter disbelief at the jagged creatures that looked to be singing. The empty masses that should have been their mouths produced such a dreadful song. It was the only audible thing in the whole forest.
It’s them, I cried in my head. It’s the Masses. They’re real
And, as I watched the figures step forward at an agonizingly slow pace from all around me, one thought repeated over and over in my mind, echoing against my skull and causing tears to stream down my face: I was not alone.
7
The Glass by Naomi Burg
It stood on the table top, colored glass catching the ray of sun with far more brightness than burnt sand deserved.
I glared at it, following the iridescent green shadow with my eyes as it tapered off of the table top, vestiges just barely reaching my arm.
It was empty. A pretty, simple receptacle with nothing inside.
Nothing.
Nothing of substance, nothing of importance, nothing but the dreaded air that filled and choked and inflamed this universe, without intention nor mercy.
I took in a deep breath, my exhale wavering.
I knew this emptiness, as paradoxical as it truly was.
The air pushed upon my lungs, sometimes as regularly as a breeze through the trees. Other times, it pushed upon me, harder and harder,
And harder, a rock abreast, crushing my cavernous coal innards in hopes of creating a diamond.
But all too often, it felt as though I was crumbling, shattering, falling into pieces that couldn’t be left to decay.
Other times, it pushed upon me, harder and harder,
And harder, a rock abreast, crushing my cavernous coal innards in hopes of creating a diamond.
But all too often, it felt as though I was crumbling, shattering, falling into pieces that couldn’t be left to decay.
Shovels always emerged, to scoop the pieces together into a golem again, pushed forwards to continue the journey. But in these reconstructions, the finer details were lost, mashed together to resemble anything else, and nothing at all.
I noticed with a jolt that the shadows had shifted. In my absence of mind, the glass had changed.
Effervescent, pale liquid bubbled and sizzled as it crashed upon the barriers halfway up the receptacle.
I frowned, eyes drawn to the slowing of the crackling bubbles as the foam drew back, and an even surface took its place.
Things had been better lately, hadn’t they? They weren’t completely fixed, but they were changing, evolving, and I was along for the ride, slowly adjusting too.
The shadow with its gaping maw towards my arm had darkened, lost that ethereal luminescence that offered a mystery without answer. The endless questions had subsided--if even for only a moment.The fizzling under the surface drew the slightest of smiles to my lips, a tangible thread of hope at the feeling, at anything above the emptiness or the anger.
A different kind of anger comes with feeling it seems.
Empty anger lashes without consequence, striking all in its path, hoping to shatter as it had been shattered, or leave the landscape as empty of action as itself.
But anger with feeling, with feeling is something else entirely. Senses striking against their barrier, tangled and confused, or trapped within a summit it cannot reach.
Anger underlies and is underlied by many things.
But happiness also fizzles, also powers the motor, in a more ephemeral way it seems. Happiness bubbled up, displacing the frustration so hesitant to release its throne.
Yet, it remains easier to find fault with that empty half than to appreciate the fizzling joy of its yang.
The yin is what remains when the gaseous bubbles have all been released--gobbled up by the ever voracious air.
Unsolicited, it remains beautiful.
But nothing stays the same forever.
In my absence, once again the foreboding glass has changed.
The fizzling liquid has reared its sparkling head, rising like high tide to crash its foam at the summit of the green glass.
Joy fills with uncomparable speed, filling every pore with its inherent energy, its hopes and aspirations to do better, to be free.
A beaming smile tears free from its confines, brightening everything around it, despite the fact that the receptacle’s own luminescence has been drowned out; its only remains a sickly, vague thing that barely extrudes onto the surface.
Filled to the brim, everything is different. But nothing can run on in such an exuberant way forever.
Such fullness gives way to emptiness, running in pursuit of the the very thing you run from.
The glass raises to my weary lips, and the bubbles prickle at my throat as I drink . . .
Drink…
Drink . . ., unrelenting in the need to fill the gaping hole that has deceptively stretched its maw once again.
With an empty clunk, the green glass makes contact with the surface of the table once more.
There is a finality in it, a bitterness that one can only attribute to the bubbles that had previously brought such joy.
The colored emerald shadow stretches long against my arm again, mocking with its quiet untold mysteries, reeling victoriously in my shock at being in this same position yet again.
The phases of the glass may be ephemeral, more or less, as changing as the moons rise and fall of the water.
But the green glass remains unchanged, solidly persistent forevermore.
And the emptiness lurks with it.