kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"TheWindTeachesMe.1.1"

words

The wind teaches me: every wisp of wind quickens my flesh with knowledge.

Somewhere, a baby cries, and a mother calms it.

Somewhere, a mother cries, and is silenced.

Somewhere, a killer cries, and only I am there, through the wind, to hear it.

I understand what it is to be naked, and human.

I understand.

Soon I will be full with understanding, where one moment past I was empty.

_He_ had been emptying me for months with his whip, making of me a canvas that would then be his; sculpting me. Last night he broke me. Too delicate--or too sensitive. The similarities and contrasts infuse me.

Out in the tall grass with only the wind to hear me moan, to cry out, to plead, he lashed me. He lashed me 'til I was numb, numb from the cold that seeped through my forearms and shins from the crumbly, awkward, rough and pinching ground, and numb from the pain--and then further. He lashed me 'til the warmth crawled from my sides and back, rolling down my ribs and dripping from my belly, escaping the cold, coating the rocks. He lashed me 'til the wind was all that supported me and the wind was all I saw and heard.

My voice swallowed itself into the numbness of my core, bled out the cracks he created in my skin and leapt to join the swirling air. Each new slice was another voice screaming secrets to the wind, trading breaths to suckle for more knowledge.

Pain was knowledge.

It came to me that the knowledge _he_ could provide was nothing compared to that which was out there--each lash was just a tease and I would be forever unsatisfied by his offerings. The voices in my flesh babbled over each other with a hint of the Truth that they could convey if I just exposed them further, refined them, amplified them.

One frozen moment, with the whip just sliding off me, caressing me farewell--I pushed forward against the ground, brought my right food under my body, connected it to the ground, and shoved; it slipped but my left foot had found purchase in that motion, and I was moving.

The wind gave me one last glimpse of him dumbfounded, whip limp at his side, pose uncertain.

I ran.

Running, I sought the harshest wind, greedy for secrets, relishing the grit cleansing my flesh. I swam the viscous eddies, left the plains for the crags, and stumbled on; breath was coming hard and heavy like the gusts of wind and new pains sprung deep inside. Cramps slowed me where cuts and bruises hadn't, but I savored them like a fine vintage, a singular playing of a master's song.

Everyone hurts, even _him_, even despots that seek to control entire populations. Everyone fears. Pain is consciousness. Consciousness exists to escape that which is pain. Consciousness exists to escape itself. Escaping pain is death.

Everyone dies. Everyone cries.

Somewhere, I cried, and the world cried with me.

As I cried, I felt the ground again beneath my feet, quads warming, burning, from the strain of ascending; labored breath brought me slower and slower to the edge that I sought, but still I progressed. Tears and wind blinded me, but still I progressed. I stumbled, crawling and pushing myself back up only to fall again, to crawl again. Still I progressed, and the world was sane in my mind; the wind cleared to a directional roar and showed me the shore I now stood above. This is life, the fear of the chasm; can you feel the fluttering of your stomach? But the ground is solid, for now. It will be your will or failure that throws you over.

I stood there for some long fraction of a stretched moment, exploring the enormity of the world, the smallness of my self, the smallness of every individual, the enormity of all individuals together.

I stood under the sky and over the ocean, between heaven and hell, and I saw what was possible: a million second comings--heaven and hell are concepts, thought-structures to explain mystical experience that can not be explained. The wind is the ocean that binds us together, and I am the vessel to purify mankind--this time.

So now I lay on the rocks of the shore, an impotent goddess, a Jesus soaking in the sins of the world; the wind teaches me, and washes them Clean. And I will take their sins with me to the ocean, to cherish, to love, to forgive.