originally published in spring 2013 at:
www.fullofcrow.com/microw/2013/03/microw-8-winter-2013-luminous/
Her Face wasn't Drawn
www.fullofcrow.com/microw/2013/03/microw-8-winter-2013-luminous/
Her Face wasn't Drawn
Sitting
in my hundred-year-old oak chair sipping on a pint of Altbier here
on the second floor of an urban apartment built in the early 20th
century, my eyes stray to the ceiling. There is water damage there
behind the cobwebs. It is visible even outside as a dark stain on the
brick.
The
cat's been dead for almost a month. The place is so quiet I overhear
the neighbors downstairs making babies. At least when the man isn't
yelling, "What's wrong with you!" The walls of the old
apartments are as thin as the walls of my heart. "It's all over
the house! What's wrong with you!"
Her
response to the ructious question is a mystery. No doubt she speaks
softly. Sitting here, I wonder if there is anything wrong with her in
actuality. There have been times we have met on the stairwell. She
always smiles when we bump into each other. The timbre of her voice
is unknown to me, for she doesn't say a word. She only smiles. And
then her face colors the foyer the brightest gold and forces me to
smile in return no matter my mood.
Last
summer, I went to the window to draw the curtains when I noticed her
sitting down there on the stoop with pencils scattered in the grass
and a large pad of paper on her lap. Her back was towards me and so I
saw what it was she was working on. A simple pencil drawing. Not of
the scene before her. At least not the scene I saw there before us.
She was sketching a landscape of the mind. A place of light and
delight that was perhaps far in the future. Or far in the past. A
place where questions with no answers are not asked in a belligerent
voice.
I
stood watching over her like an angel of the ether. Watched the
sketch take form as she sat there on the concrete steps facing an
unseen city street. Joggers ran past. A fire engine blared by with
lights of emergency. Yet she calmly sketched on, smudging the lead
upon the creamy paper like a violinist pushing notes into the air of
a gilded concert hall. I stood there in the clouds behind her, awed.
Watched her hands. Saw that she didn't seem to need religion to
illuminate the neighborhood with spectacular silence.
~
Rouchswalwe
originally
published in fullofcrow.com/microw/
