A
I was born under the great American weight, burdened with pounds of sugar and the fatted calf. I cut records and broke laws and flocked the yearly trees, cultivated opinions and lost the love of art and the art of love. Eventually my back bent and grew stooped from all of the opportunity and so I built four walls to hold a roof up over my head, between me and the open sky, and a floor, just above the earth and right beneath my feet, so that I was suspended between the two, part of neither Heaven nor the Earth. The years still passed under the roof and I finally lost the taste for sugar and cooked meat and I came to miss the feel of earth and counting stars, however useless a task, and I wanted to return to wherever it was that I had once been and recall the grit and glitter. But in my haste, I had built no doors or windows into my walls. There was no leaving. So I poured out the pounds of sugar I had left onto the floor that I built under my feet and lay down on this white beach of sorts. With sand against my skin now, I stared into the dark and starless eaves. I tossed handfuls of the sugar up into the gloom and let it fall all around, blinking at times like the stars I remembered and I counted the flickers and lay in the sand there under the roof I had built over my head, the great American weight.
I was born under the great American weight, burdened with pounds of sugar and the fatted calf. I cut records and broke laws and flocked the yearly trees, cultivated opinions and lost the love of art and the art of love. Eventually my back bent and grew stooped from all of the opportunity and so I built four walls to hold a roof up over my head, between me and the open sky, and a floor, just above the earth and right beneath my feet, so that I was suspended between the two, part of neither Heaven nor the Earth. The years still passed under the roof and I finally lost the taste for sugar and cooked meat and I came to miss the feel of earth and counting stars, however useless a task, and I wanted to return to wherever it was that I had once been and recall the grit and glitter. But in my haste, I had built no doors or windows into my walls. There was no leaving. So I poured out the pounds of sugar I had left onto the floor that I built under my feet and lay down on this white beach of sorts. With sand against my skin now, I stared into the dark and starless eaves. I tossed handfuls of the sugar up into the gloom and let it fall all around, blinking at times like the stars I remembered and I counted the flickers and lay in the sand there under the roof I had built over my head, the great American weight.
That was fabulous!! Prose for the senses.
ReplyDeleteThank you Gwen!
ReplyDelete