Prologue: Sefer, Scenes 1 & 2
Excerpt from “Until We Were As Kings”
“Stay, time, in your own
decanter; that I might drink you all in one.”
“Faust, abridged” by C.S. McNevin
There. Caught one.
Bright and early-crusted, flaked. To melt, in soft, on nose or tip of tongue; a taste unlike the bread we rolled, with sun and salt to bake in—
“You forgot your gloves again.”
A coat in denim, arms to fade, from when I’d touched. Her hair to fall along the nape; imperfect, plain, of jet. “And you, your ears.”
The tufts of wool she held, embraced, to head; a field of amaranth and frosted bangs we kept on wry, to ward in weight of. “They’ll thaw.”
Her breath, a puff. “And when the harvest rains are long, my dear, will I have to call your name between the drops? Or will some spriggans, waifs and odd-musked fey things also come to the names of ‘Adam’, ‘son’ and ‘where must he have run off to and sunk his head’?”
A pika matron, full-fledged, poked at nest for finches, seed, and signs of fox-tail. As she set the tufts to ear, and brushed the snow in lock away.
Tch.
Why did it have to be the same in red as his, as the flower always, staid, ‘unending’, or the shade of sun when set? “He called for me?”
I felt her touch, in deft, upon my chin. Just enough to linger there and tilt me up, her eyes the still of pond as willow pressed. “Must he always?”
(*I wish that things would stay the same here.*)
There was a forward leaning to his walk, the abbad, Joseph: the length of shovel, shoulders bent, his tempered cough. Brittle as the air. On the road Samadhi led from.
Her coat and scarf, with prayers she’d claimed — the stone-hewn plates of oak and terebinth that village folk or sojourns placed — by the rows of poplar swaying. Our gloves to hold against their rock, the cold that ate.
“Another gift?”
The abbad, slowing, drained and spent; of wet snow, straw. Mud that crept below and sank. His coat and raiments, collar choking. That taste of raw earth damp with pond and graves. “One you’re not to open while I’m gone.”
And there it was. A simple lacquer box, white-knuckled, close. In frame to heart. Still warm enough to hold my palm. “You’re leaving, abbad — ?”
His nose and upper lip, encrusted, clot. From the swollen, black spot where she’d struck. “Your mother and I will both be, yes.”
(*They never will be.*)
Peronally, I prefer a good rainfall. Turns the fingers icy, but a warm dog or towel will get you dry again (and you can grow to love the smell of either).
Adam needs his snow right when it falls though; when the sky has opened up and fills with little moments caught in time.
This wasn’t always the first scene. But it is the first moment that I saw him and thought, “I want the world to know you.”
- J
