Member-only story
And She Would Bear a Son
~ A Love Story ~
Her eyes were closed, his open, and between the woman and the man, ghost screams rose, and like thin long birds that break their beaks against cracked mirrors, flapped around, then settled to roost in the disquiet of an abandoned citadel of silence. Both lay at the edge of an empty space, their grief-seared backs towards each other. Bodies held taut as though the tiniest movement would hurtle them into an abyss from which there was no return — the damning acknowledgement of absence. But it was only a sliver of space on a tattered mat in a poor fisherman’s hut. Between them should have been a child.
THE MAN
Suddenly he rolled off the bed, like a manatee lifted by an upsurge of grey-green ocean.
He shut then latched a window beyond which jacaranda trees shivered. Lightning, thunder and steel-blue clouds played a dreadful orchestration and the rain was cold, the ground warm and flowers bled crystal blood. Curly crotons lit up a corner with a glow made of emerald dust, sunsets and dawns.
To him they meant nothing because he had nothing left to give her. Nor she to him. War, separation, and fear had turned bandit and stripped them both naked, rendered heart wounded and soul lost. No room left to maneuver. No space in which to breathe and live, just live.
