::novella::



Which direction do you start walking within the desert to escape the sun's lashes upon your burnt back? It's getting hard to remember who she is in this oceanic-drought of nothingness. While sleep-dreaming, she feels lizards and snakes crawl across her shivering belly. Once awake and walking, all she knows is her parched, sandpapered tongue. She can't recall when in time she entered this wretched place. It seems to be all she has ever known. No past, and seemingly, no longer a future.



She half-walked and wavered, creating a woven design in the sand. Observing that there was a large dune up ahead, she composed her Self and smiled: Finally, sweet, sweet shade. The sun would soon set and she would return to convulsive chattering of her teeth, but for now she could rest in mild comfort. As she came closer to her temporary refuge, she had a sudden splash of joy to see a desert flower in bloom. It was such splendor to see colour in this inhumane habitat. She thought it to be just another mirage at a second glance, though. The petals were arranged in an odd fashion and the spectral intensity of the colours seemed unreal. The flower was split in half, for on one side it splayed upwards, bathing in the sunlight, and in the shade, it was curling at the tips and coming through itself to the other side, creating an organic ribbon in the symbol of Infinity.



"Are dreams infinite?" she asked her new friend, the split-personality plant. "Oh, i'm sorry, how rude of me. i forgot my Self for a moment, my name is...my....oh my." She sat down just then, on the shady side of the sand...realizing she didn't know her Self any longer. She figured she would talk out loud to fill up the empty air. "There was this story i was once told, little flower. It's an old Zen story. Maybe you heard of it? About a man, a tiger, a cliff and a strawberry...well, i think i will devise my own version of the story. Here it is:



There was a lost little girl trapped inside voluptuous curves and never-ending sand. The sun was high, her spirits low. The emptiness was chasing her down, the wind was sucking her dry. The night was freezing her heart. All her memories were fading, until she spotted a peculiar thing, standing alone in the desert. As she took a closer look at it, it was a marvelous flower, splitting itself in two for the sky. She fancied the look of it and pondered its odd existence. She soon decided that since there was no chance of following the breadcrumbs Home, and nothing to look forward to in the desert, that she would sit beside this rare flower and make this her Parting Place. My-oh-my, this flower was exotically beautiful...the colours infused through the petals seemed to flow like liquid...just one drop to quench the hunger-pained thirst...



"Eat the strawberry." whispered the wind, sotto voce.



Without a second thought, like the man hanging on the edge of the cliff, she reached out her fingertips to touch the flower's corolla. Her hand reached into the sun and caressed the outstretched petals, as if it were her lover's skin...(she had a visual flash of a tanned, lower back...and she inhaled the musky scent of patchouli). She crossed over it's purple pollen-patch, onto the shaded side. Sliding like silk under her finger-prints, and she looped two fingers through the twisted petals, and gently pulled.



"For every flower plucked in passion..." she mused. The moment her tongue reached out to greet the petal at her parting lips, it liquefied into an intoxicatingly sweet substance.

07/30/2003

Posted on 07/30/2003
Copyright © 2024 Bethany Lee