Fast Snow

The following piece is approximately a year old and one that was an exercise in a writer's workshop I used to attend on a weekly basis. The signal phrase was "fast snow" and these words were a required presence in the piece. Inspiration stemmed from the weather, a splendid poem by Lisa Olstein and from one of the dark crevices of my mind.

Fast Snow


The earth, this intertwining of

oxygenated verdure, saline seas

and chaotic limbs

is warming by imperceptible degrees,

and yet this sonorous blast of destruction,

of despoilment,

as white venal flakes of frozen rain

descend at an exponential speed,

this fast snow scarring pearlescent

shoulders, bruising ashen, protruding

bellies, producing irrefutable marks,

wounds billowing with bulbous pus

no suture could seal,

and yet she strides through

this barrage of blinding color,

untouched, virginal, saintly.

A Lover's Discourse

Note to readers: I am a self-proclaimed "Organizational Freak", so much so that my temple is The Container Store and my religion Organization. However, despite this Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) tendency, over the course of this past year, I have managed to 'misplace' this following piece. "A Lover's Discourse" was inspired by both Alain de Botton's novel, On Love and the philosophical works of Roland Barthes. This piece is unedited and more philosophically driven than most of my other creative writing. Hope you enjoy!

-Oreet

The internal lover's discourse commences:


It came out in a long sigh, one in which all grievances resonated within the adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.
“You clearly stopped loving me,”.
“You no longer need me,”.
“I was merely a trophy for you to put on your mantle, to collect dust,”.
“You loved me conditionally,”.


No response necessary, the verdict decided, the punishment soon to be meted out.

Closely followed by:


Leaving in order to instigate a response, a fight for love, a fight against love, a constant battle in which there exists no clear victor—both parties having to reconstruct themselves, glue the pieces of that which was once whole, into a makeshift vase that still contains the various attributes that once constituted this person, devoid of the other.

But perhaps:

Staying in order to appease the fears; the fear of not being able to stand alone, to reach out to another and yet find the loneliness, the desolateness, the fact that solely you are there.

Inevitably we find ourselves:

Missing another, but more missing the other’s behavior, the idiosyncratic gestures, the need to feel wanted, to feel cared for.

Finally:

Finding that in another, trying to deconstruct all of the pieces of yourself that had finally become whole again, a varying version but yet whole, only to chance breaking anew. This continuous cycle of breaking and reconstruction.

A Cast of Characters

The sun burnt man, walking in with a swagger, so certain of his “belonging”;
The beautiful woman denying the world of her smile for fear of exposing her jagged teeth;
The middle-aged balding man refusing to believe that his best years are behind him, with his “cool” bag and designer jeans;
The silent observer as dark as the night, listening, watching, analyzing;
The love triangle trio, he loves her, she loves him, and he inevitably loves himself far too much to ever love another;
The Russian, Bulgarian, Armenian, this man of accents, bartering his life over the phone;
The quirky girl with a 1920s white, chiffon dress, jovial with a black suitcase packed… just in case;
The bohemian, reading a poetry book, the words forming images in her mind as she chews on her dread-locked hair;
The manly Asian man with a pink band-aid on his index finger, jabbing at his computer;
The pot-bellied, white t-shirt wearing worker, exasperated as perspiration trickles down his forehead, into your coffee cup;

And you, sitting in front of me, unaware or perhaps not ever caring enough to notice, me.

Burn. Burning. Burnt.

Searching for the North Star,
my nocturnal compass,
scouring the earth for the
underground railroad leading
me to me,
only to be just as lost as before,
my sole souvenir from this
fruitless journey—
eyes blinded by lunar rays.
Lost. Searching for a map that
would lead me back to me,
instead I get lost in you,
and as I canvassed your
Valleys of Abuse, returning
with lacerations marking my body
like third-degree burns,
as would an incorrigible pyromaniac,
undeterred by your incendiary words
covering my ashen skin like
tattoos indelibly claiming me,
and despite your strong hand
clasping my neck, choking me,
objectifying me (success!),
I return, over and over and over
again. Burn. Burning. Burnt.

Nearly

She turns on the light, the hum of the electric particles reverberating in her eardrums. The stark light hits her pale skin as she turns the faucet’s knob, water running like the fragments of him down her leg. She places her trembling hands under the water and splashes it onto her cheekbones, yearning for rejuvenation and possibly salvation. Then, her hands canvass the rest of her body, washing him and that which they will never be off of her bruised limbs, her body war-torn soil and he the clear victor.

Thoughts stream through her mind, each tinged with guilt and regret, having yet again allowed herself to be conquered by him, someone whose sole aim is to ravage, to destruct, to incinerate all that is whole in her as a fire rages through a pillaged city.

She returns to his bed, him lying there satisfied, his appetite satiated, he the lion and she the devoured prey, solely a naked carcass remaining of her. But she paints on an amiable smile, continuing this charade, playing the designated role so well it’s nearly believable. Nearly.

Telegram, stop.

A work in progress...

A gasp, a palpable and visible strand of air was expelled from
her lungs, stop.
He hung his moist words on the lines of her eyes,
to dry, stop.
Her eyes were teary, so his words shriveled and pruned like
old lady’s hands, stop.
So he picked the rotten words from her branches,
choked on the pits, stop.
Coughing, letters dripped from his lips, v l o e e m,
nonsensical, worthless, stop.
He understood speech to be extraneous material, glue
refusing to stick, stop.
She, glutinous from all his nouns and adjectives,
comes undone, stop.
They, strolling contradictions, unable to communicate,
choking, breaking, stop.

Victims of Ashes

This is my attempt at 'flash fiction':

Victims of Ashes

Stepping out of the ashes of the dead, Henja brushes her shoulders and walks out of the camp into the nocturnal sky filled with smoke. Her eerie appearance announces to the world the cataclysm perpetrated by the masters of inhumanity—a shaved scalp, a body now composed of cinder and bone, sunken eyes and a protruding belly. Henja, the fierce woman with 78923 seared onto her skin no longer knows how to live in a world where ashes blind her eyes, a constant raining memorial of those lost. She cannot look to the future when she cannot even bear to look to the past. When she closes her sorrowful eyes, a scene flashes of a girl with lustrous black hair, dancing around a table filled with challah and matzo ball chicken soup, but then this ethereal dream is drowned in crimson blood, with screaming whispers inundating her ears. There is no escape. There never is an escape from the cruelty of man and the havoc it wreaks upon its victims. Henja is a victim. Her sister, Pieja is a victim. Poland is a victim. And even Deutschland is a victim—to the ashes falling from the sky but originating from the corpses of once childish and happy individuals with dark hair and eyes and slightly pointed noses. We are all victims.