Lost Journal 2

August 5, 1993

It wasn’t so long ago. It was only when he left us for good. It was the summer before the reaping.

“What’s wrong?”

His eyes were full of something, but I cannot tell you what it was. That something caused me to stir in the darkest parts of me. His eyes twinkled. This time they didn’t shine because of love or happiness. They shone a colour which spoke poison to my heart.

“Matt, what’s wrong?”

He gave me a weak smile. I didn’t want it but I took it anyway.

“Nothing’s the matter. It’s just a gloomy day-a gloomy Sunday.”

It was a dark and dismal day. The wind blew softly carrying with it the last warmth of summer. I watched the prophet named Matt as he leaned back on the couch. He put both hands over his face.

“You are hiding something from me.”

He was silent. The house creaked bringing the whole scene back to reality. We were two poor people sitting around talking about why we were unhappy. Or, at least, I was talking about it. Matt straightened his posture and stared at me.

“Yes, something’s wrong. She isn’t here.”

I was confused. “What?”

Matt cleared his throat. “The goddess of love is absent today. I do not feel her presence at all. There are no sultry substances in either corner. See, look! There are only cobwebs!”

I looked into the corners of the room and they looked the same as they always did. I thought Matt was being silly.

“She isn’t real, you know. None of them are real, the gods…the other gods. They used to be real but my God destroyed them.”

Matt shook his head and grumbled. “This is not the time to be judgmental and a know-it-all. She is not here, whether you believe or not. She is not here and she has been here everyday before!”

I saw a lock of hair fall into Matt’s face. I reached out and pushed the brown strands back  behind his ear. He smiled. “I want you to see her. I want you to understand what’s been happening. The only thing is, this is the first day that she hasn’t been here with us. This is the first day that the corners of the room grow dark. Something else is here.”

I realized how late it was. I also realized that I would have to leave town soon. In days, I would be on my way to school. It would be weeks before I saw him again.

October 31, 1993

From room to room I wandered. I saw a clown, a horse and even a banana. There were things everywhere that seemed to be ludicrous. The party pulsed and I made my way down a long hall dressed with rainbow lights. I stopped underneath a green light and slid down the wall. When my bottom hit the floor, I laughed. I was high. I felt warm, cradled in a soothing cloud of euphoria. There wasn’t much that could break me from the haze and there wasn’t much that could take me higher. I was there, nothing more than being. There was a voice which lifted from my drunken depths and pronounced itself as my friend.

“Help me.”

I knew his voice. I could feel the rasping of his breath upon my ear as if he were sitting right beside me. There was no one else who sounded like that. He spoke again and this time, he pleaded.

“I want to live!”

There was no mistaking. The prophet needed me and he needed me now. I turned my head to gaze down the corridor. Red, blue and orange lights led the way toward the front door. I was mystified with concern-paranoid beyond measure.

“I’m coming.”

January 2, 1994

I stood at the foot of the mound of earth. Nothing moved but the wind through the leaves and my hair across my face. The scene was shod in sliced portions. The sky was cut away neatly from the rest of my view. It was a strange dream, but it was not.

“I’m still here.”

I spoke to the ground as if it would grow a face and speak back. Part of me wished for a response while part of me hoped like hell, that no sound came back.

“Live…”

I heard it again-as clear as a glass of water. His voice wasn’t strained no did it shiver. He was as real as he could be except for the fact that I couldn’t see him.

“I’m here. I told you I’m here! Now, what do you want from me?”

There was a silence then. It was a void that made the birds stop singing and the earth stop sighing. It was something so quiet that it screamed in inaudible whispers. The unsound of it made me want to scream. For a moment, I wished he would just shut up!

“Why are you speaking to me? Why don’t you just be quiet!”

The cemetery wept. I cannot tell you about the wet mud under my feet as the tears of the graveyard. I cannot say it was raining to symbolize the mourning. I can only say that the cemetery wept because my heart felt it. There was a feminine presence there too, one beside my own. I felt her all around me.

“She’s here, Matt. It’s her, isn’t it.”

“Yes….”

I didn’t understand then anymore than I had been baffled months before. I can say I knew her. I can also say that there were more Gods than I wanted to admit. There were many and they crowded around me, suffocating my will to run away.

“She’s here and I know what you did.”

The ground was still and so was everything that surrounded. It was awhile before the prophet spoke, but when he did, I knew why he wanted to speak at all.

“I want you to live.” He spoke and the earth opened up in front of me. The soil exploded into thousands of bumble bees. I could not move.

A Lost Journal 1

January 2, 1994

“I can hear you.”

It passed through my head like a shrieking pain. It was his voice. It was as real as any of his whispers or proclamations of spiritual enlightenment. His voice was soft, smooth and deep, just like when he leaned in to kiss my cheek on that fateful day before he fell to depths too deep. He was here and he was real.

“I heard you. I am here and I won’t leave.” I whispered.

It came again. A slow rhythmic tone, followed by a lisp. I could almost make out the words that drifted up through the topsoil. I didn’t want to dig because the groundskeeper might not appreciate the desecration, no he wouldn’t like that. The thing is, I heard him and I wanted to help him. He had to need help, why else would he speak to me now?

“Say something. I cannot understand what you're saying.”

I dug softly now, only removing the large clods of red dirt from the sifted second layer. My nails filled with compacted earth. I listened.

Live

That was it. I heard the word as clear as day. It was faint and covered in groggy slurs. Now I racked my brain as to what the word meant. “Live”, what did he mean by live? He was not alive, or was he? The sudden urge to dig came upon me in full force.

“Please…talk to me!”

September 13, 1992

“Read, here.”

He pointed to the scripture. His finger shook lightly because he wanted me to take him seriously and he was nervous. I took him seriously or as much as possible. His tan round face with long brown hair were a slight distraction. I watched his eyes, they were places that no sane woman could ever escape. I turned away quickly to save myself. He looked down and moved his finger across the first line and then the next.

“Look! I want you to see the correlation between what John is saying and what I told you the other day.”

I swallowed that old dreaded and faithful lump in my throat. “Listen, I don’t think you should twist the scriptures like that. It’s the word of God.”

He smiled. “Oh, but I’m twisting nothing. I am showing you something that most people cannot see. There is a stark connection between what I practice and what you practice. The striking thing is that you, my dear, are a little lost.”

I gasped, pushing a long auburn lock of hair behind my ear. “Oh really?  So, what are you, some prophet?”

He was beautiful. He turned his face to mine and presented me with a large and inviting smile. I caught his eyes just before he laughed. They squinted almost closed when he smiled. He laughed softly at every revelation that he gave me. It was everything in that moment and he was perfect.

“You know how we get stoned, as you call it?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“Well, it says here…”

Matt flipped pages in a flurry, landing on a page very near revelations. I believe it was in Jude. He grabbed my finger and put it down on another scripture. “Look, here!”

I frowned as I read the verse. “That doesn’t have anything to do with what you said, Matt.”

He lay his hand atop mine and started to caress my fingers. “Yeah, but I got your attention, didn’t I? It’s here! I tell you, it’s here. I just forgot where it was and I promise I’m not lying to you. I tell you what, I will find it for you before next time.”

I shook my head. He was too much, always coming up with some wild idea that smoking weed was spiritual. It was always about getting high and not letting religious people try to bring him down. I suppose I was religious to Matt.

He saw me visually doubting him so he dropped his head. I heard him muttering.

“What are you carrying on about now, Matt?”

He shrugged.

“I mean it. I’m listening, tell me.”

I saw his eyes through the curtain of brown hair. His smirk was teasing me. “Listen, I have my notes here somewhere but Caryanne put them away. I have no idea where she put them. When I find them, I will show you.”

“Okay.”

I had to leave. I had spent too much time here with Matt and it wasn’t right.

“I have to go.”

He stood and his bare chest was at eye level to me. I stared at his brown skin and wanted to touch it. I forced myself to look up into his face. He took my face in his hands and caressed my ears. “Don’t go now.”

“I have to go, really.”

He tilted his head to the side and chuckled. “Well, if you must go, then go LIVE!”

I giggled and left him standing there. He stared at me because I looked back and caught his crazy smiled growing wide with another desperate revelation.

June 13, 1993

The water rushed across the rocks and down into the stream. I looked down into the flow watching my face contort this way and that. The sights and sounds were delicious, the trickling water tickled my mind and my ears. I loved the secret place, I loved it even more than the cave off the main highway over on the other side of town. I loved the secret place more than the deep woods behind my father’s house. I just loved the secret place because he was here with me and probably because we weren’t supposed to be here at all.

I wore little white flowers in my hair, twined into random braids. The Plaits were strewn amongst my long strands of amber locks which reached my waist. I wore a light blue sun dress which fell just below the knee. I was holding the hem now, as if holding the ends of my dress would keep me from falling into the creek. I believed it could. I believed many things and in some ways, my faith was unshakable.

“Love is important, Matt. It is the most important thing in the word.”

He came near to me, smiling about some mischievous plan.

“Love and freedom, those are the key. We must be free to partake of the earth’s bounty, my sweetheart.”

“I didn’t say that. I said LOVE was important, Matt.”

He chuckled at me. “Yes, I know. You will come around eventually and then you will thank me. You will live one day.”

I stood still. The sky called me look up and I did. I saw the cottony clouds, just as white as the little flowers in my hair and just as innocent as I wanted to be. Then I soared, I flew into the clouds right before I dropped the burning roach from my pinched fingers.

“Crap!”

I wobbled but he caught me. Sweeping me off my feet and falling onto the creek bank, Matt cradled me close.

“That was close, fairy. It’s okay.” Matt shifted and dug into his pocket. He retrieved a small baggie with stinky green. “I gotcha covered, little one.”

I laughed and pushed at his chest with my fists. “Let go of me! I wasn’t falling, you just can’t keep your hands off me! I don’t know what you’re talking about either. I don’t want any of that stuff!”

I climbed from his embrace and straightened my dress. Some of the little white flowers, those that kids make bracelets from, were falling from my braids. I picked a few loose ones and flung them to the ground.

“Look!” I pointed to my head and smirked. “Look what you did to me. I am a mess now, no longer a pretty little fairy and I’m dirty now too.”

I ran across the rocks, skipping and leaping down into the waterfall. The first splash was cool, livening my tan skin. I waded deeper past the edges of the creek and into the pool. I walked into the water wall. I was momentarily submerged in the warm water. It engulfed me, pushing more of the white flowers away in the flow. I closed my eyes and imagined I was flying through water in the sky. I was higher now, I was breathing the current and taking the life of the water into my soul. I was one with the woods, the trees and I was one with the prophet…the prophet who stood just outside the flow of the waterfall. I opened my eyes and, yes, he was there. He was naked and motionless. I closed my eyes and pulled my dress over my head, against the force of the water, against my morals and beliefs. I was dividing and releasing something that fought with my every desire. Live! It said live as the prophet entered the waters and took me into his arms. Through the water, I heard him say…

“Live!”