Ash Cinema Read online

  all i ever needed

  you

  and youre gone

  because i left you in the sun

  travelled through hells and heavens

  only to find the paradise

  i first kissed in my homeland

  the homeland i have lost

  never needed

  once there was you

  dont go

  please

  dont leave

  your heart

  i plunged deep

  youre not there

  but i found you

  a center

  the hole you told me of

  my name

  your promise

  the dream that was her

  i kiss it

  again and again

  i feel it

  your breath

  your life

  come back

  follow me

  shouting

  i left you a way

  signposts

  come back

  dont look back

  walk forward

  following my silent song

  i will sing it all death long

  if it means you belong

  to me

  and i to you

  I heard you. Not in words or sounds but in silence, the way we used to be, the way you held me. You remember. The Cliffs of Moher, all sound gone but the wind. Voiceless above it all, every word ripped into the North Sea. Tokyo, and we found a place in all that noise to catch an hour of silence so holy it filled us with its music for as long as we had left. Your hands on my ears, I heard them, that nothing, your breath filling my lungs, your kiss stealing my love, taking it with you past the ocean of death that I have not moved from all this time, knowing you would return. I want to tell you of the last time. The last time I tried to bring you back. Of all the many trials, this was the shortest and most painful, and it brought me back to life, gave me to that woman I had spent my life without you dreaming of. Do you remember the story of the boy with glass eyes, a metal tongue, and wooden heart? You made it up, invented it one night with after too much wine in Turin. We sat on the balcony and you sang me a song that you posthumously titled The Boy Never Lied: A Ballad. It was about a boy born with a wooden heart, glass eyes, and a metal tongue. Every years these objects stayed the same size, though the boy grew as all boys are wont to do. The people that he met reviled him and spat in his face but he forgave them because they could not see what he saw. With one glass eyes, the left one, I think, he saw the past, and with the other he saw the future. The present was lost to him and so he did not understand the reaction of others, why they hated him so. He did not understand that he should not have said the things he said, how he told people of their futures and their pasts as if they happened concurrently, as if they happened right then and there. For him, they did, but for the rest, the past is private and the future is secret. This boy, the Boy of Nowhere, lived in three times but only existed in the present, the one he could not see. With his metal tongue, he could not lie because of its solidity. It takes pliable flesh to lie, manipulate the truth, bend it against teeth, against the roof of one's mouth. But his was a dense and course organ suited only to tell what was true, and so he was hated all the more, because they knew it was true, the words he said. They understood his nature but not his predicament. His heart was wood because it withered too soon, rotted and waterlogged, he never saw his tenth year, the maggots infested his chest from the inside and his chest burst as the wood expanded. He never loved because it takes meat to feel emotion. He walked alone through the present knowing both past and future, but no love, no friendship, and understanding not even a little all the hate that surrounded him. He met death and birth at the same moment twice over, at the beginning and end, the only times he was seen to smile. Do you remember? You said it was a fairytale but I knew it was not. Not like other ones. Sebastian wanted to film it but we could not adapt it and you burned our script. I did not understand but I do now, and I am sorry for trying so hard to bring that one to life. Dreams are private. We knew that most of all, Sebastian and me, but it never stopped us. Nine years after your death, the story came back and plagued me. I shaved my head and went to a temple where I spent three months not speaking or looking at another. There were many monks there but I did not look at them and they made a point to avoid me. Never once did I speak to them. I arrived there and walked through as if I belonged and they accepted this as if I was always there. I took to sleeping beneath a tree near the edge of the temple. I ate one meal a day. A simple bowl of white rice with vegetables. They often left it for me at the temple steps at noon, or what I always imagined was noon. For three months I lived so. Do you remember this one? It was the one you wrote. The one you forbid us to premier. We did anyway because it was so beautiful. I did not understand then and it is why it did not work for those three months I was there. I believe now that if I understood you better, as I do at this moment, I could have brought you back then, made you real. But it was only emptiness for me. I lived in perfect silence for the monks did not disturb me. On the ninetieth day, I left. I do not know what the monks thought, but I imagine they thought little of it. I never returned. It was your dream. A private matter. You never told me. I never asked. I did not understand. I am sorry.

  The scribbling of his pen did not stop or slow, but continued on, the neat cursive turning coarse and indecipherable. The growth stretched across the ceiling, crept over the floor, the walls pulsating with fauna, the purple haze filling the air, the bright evenstar shining brilliant from its birthplace in that consumed bowl. He wrote, faster. He wrote till blind. He wrote and the vines crawled up his leg, reached for, caressed, and bound him to the chair. The millennial fires approached, scorching the walls, melting the windows, but not cooking inside, only feeding the plant, causing it to grow exponentially, and feed him who stayed to write it all back to life. The purple haze choked out all else but hands formed from the cracks in the wall lined with soot and ash, hands that swam through the haze, a vague visage, a cold embrace, constantly fleeting, swallowed by the mist.

  After I left the temple I fell into her, metaphorically and physically. I walked without seeing, walked without stepping, breathed without living, until I knocked her over, bouldered right into her tiny frame. She shouted and I helped her up and said, I know you, my reverie broken, the shroud of your life, the cloud I lived under for almost a decade dissipated and there she stood, violet eyes and the blackest hair. Caught in her sight, those irises I walked in, those pupils that swallowed me, that I swam through until I found where her life beat from. A mountain to match my hole, my canyon, the one you dug inside me. When I came into her she came back and filled me and I forgot. I gave her a child but she gave me a life and I lived. She taught me how but took it all with her, the mountain for my canyon, the reason and way to live a life. I continued on habitually, lost in the mists of lovers' deaths. For so long I dreamt of you and not her but I knew I could not bring you back. I had tried for ten years. Tried a hundred times, a hundred ways, but nothing worked. When all I needed to do was write. Memorial missives, to compose you until I recreated you. I never thought, though it was how she came to life. First through dreams, then through words. After you, my words all fell apart and I wrote no more. That post-it in Cannes was the first thought I have written since before you died. Had I known what I already knew deepest, I would have continued. I would have lighted the path back to me. I would have sang silently for years of your touch. So much time and I have not forgotten you. I smell you still, feel your hands on me, the light kiss on my neck, but I dare not stop. If I turn to you, drop the pen, will you be there? Will you wait for me long enough to hold me as I long to hold you? Even now, the plant grows and threatens to take you from me. Your face fades, less distinct, your aroma wanes, my memories dry up and yield no crops, no faces. The more I recall, the faster it goes, like drawing a map for this demon plant. The plant keeps me alive but steals you, the reason to live. If I survi
ve, if it makes me young again, and I no longer know you, will it be worth it? Is it worth my life to have it back? I dare not look to it, the plant, its light mesmerises and I will be lost. It grows now even inside me, but you cling tight. Hold me closer until this is over. Whisper to me. Yes. Sing. I hear you singing. Singing silently. Let us sing together. Forever. I sit here with you, the everfading ghost of my youth, fighting to keep us both alive. I must live to bring you back, and so the plant must stay, though it eats you. To lose it is to lose you and me and you. The silence replaced by its pulsing lifeforce. I hear it. Can you hear it? My legs now covered and I dare not look, dare not avert my eyes from the page less it be snatched away, consumed like the rest. You are still here. I feel your heartbeat but I cannot remember it. My hand grows stronger, my breathing easier, my heart faster, but you slip away, your deadlife falling from me. Hold on. Hold on. I will buoy you to my life, tie your lost life to mine, and carry you through the millennial purge at my door. At our door. I say a name but I cannot remember. Your name. Whisper it to me. Please. If I lose it, your name, the prayer I feed on, please tell me. Do not let go. Hold tight, feel my hand on yours. My skin is on fire with your electric touch, the hush of thousands of wings, like all the fireflies I kept once in jars a thousand miles from here and almost a century ago. With you, I give my life, the life sucked from me, exchanged, and recreated. My love grows weak, my heart lives stronger. Where are you? Please.

  The plant grew over him but the touch disintegrated. He grabbed at the leaves, the vines, and ripped them away, pulling, screaming, disconnecting his life to its. He stuck fingers down his throat and wretched until the stems and leaves and petals fell from his mouth in a pile of purple bile. He pulled his legs from the floor they bound to. His limbs aged the more he unplugged, the less connected to life he became. His legs unsteady, cracking, creaking, the years flooded back into him, his lungs broken, his heart splintered, he shuffled through the vegetation, the fauna of his apartment until he reached its heart, the plant he carried home with him only days before when the fires were far away and not pushing on the windows.

  He ripped the flower from the root and crumbled it in his hands, ripped it apart, its icefire scalding his hands, and it turned to ash. He pulled at the roots in the bowl and they came away, meter after meter, dug through the floor, thick as his arm, and his strength failed him but he pulled on, a name returning, two syllables, and he wheezed and sputtered blood from his lips, his heart hammering and pleading against this race towards demise.

  The roots came away end he threw them on the floor where they shrivelled like the left behind skin of great snakes and turned to cinder and then smoke. He pulled the plants from the walls but they rotted and disintegrated before his hands made contact. The air stunk of sulphur, of dead memories, and old ghosts. He hurried, body collapsing, molecules breaking to atoms, his body shelling, leaving only a name, a promise, and a dream.

  The pen in hand, he pushed his shaking fist on, the rest of his body numbed, burning from within, decomposing with the effort.

  Come back to me I killed it come back just one more time only for one last kiss alec Alec Alec Alec I say it too to make it true to bring me back to you Alec Alec Alec Alec alec alce aelc come back to me if for only this for this last time for a touch a whisper a silent song please come back I need you I loved you anywhere even after death I promise to love you and we shall be together past this burning millennium we shall rest and be made whole come back please I can do no more Do you remember I remember your eyes and that scar bisecting your left eyebrow and the stitches you had on your chin to cover the exposed bone from the rock that your cousin threw when he saw us together when you loved me anywhere and everywhere remember me as I remember you they flood back but I lose me dying or not breathing only once please kiss I need only one I sing you a song hear me follow my voiceless words

  His hand trembled to stop, clinging to the pen, to his heart. His head on the table, his breath failing, his lungs shrivelling, but his heart still beat. His blood lived.

  ***

  He opened his eyes when the windows shattered and the glass rained onto the floor, the inferno burning, roaring, raging, his skin slick with sweat and urine. The clock, 3:19. He smiled and felt a hand touch his, meat and memory, the brush against his parted cracked lips. An impression of nose and chin, gone before the smile reached the corners of his mouth. He raised his head and pushed himself on buckled knees to stand. The pyre called out, singing violently. A young girl stood watching him. A girl with ravenhair and violet eyes. She wore a clean and pure dress the color of new dawns, of bright stars, and harvest moons, evershifting, transient.

  She stepped towards him and his mouth opened to speak but she took his hand and the tears rivered down his face until they evaporated and steam filled the air before his eyes. She looked into his eyes and steadied his steps. She led him through the door of the apartment without speaking. They walked down the three flights of stairs and out into the street. He saw nothing but the blinding smoke, felt nothing but his skin melting and her fingers, holding his own lightly, but with great strength. The only smell, sulphur and his own burning flesh, and then, hints of another scent. of petals in the rain, whispered syllables, lover's sweat, living memories and burning pasts.

  He followed her through the mist and saw at intervals two bright purple stars a million miles away but only beyond his fingertips. He followed on broken steps over a collapsing earth. He did not breath but he did not need to. His heart no longer beat but his blood still lived, if only for the promise, the name, the dream.

  They reached the shore, the sand sucking at his feet and he disintegrating to sand and mixed with what lied there. The fires had not reached the ocean where they might be purified and the cloud dissipated. He watched the sun sink into the ocean then rise again bloomed like rose petals and then back through the horizon leaving the stains of lilac wine on the moon peering through the atmosphere, a constant dance between sister lights, the retreat of moon, the emergence of sun, a celestial ballet.

  The water lapped against his fast failing body and the cold water solidified him, made him whole enough to keep standing. They stopped and stared out into the ocean, the sun and moon weaving, waving. He turned to her.

  I'm not living, am I, he said.

  She looked into his face, her own made of porcelain, shining and pure, smooth. She did not speak but her eyes opened wide and he stared at her staring at him and he fell to his knees, eyes tied to hers, but body facing the ocean. Hands on his shoulders like the faint brush of a breeze, butterflies and almost kisses.

  She took his face in her hands and breathed into him. His body slumped, held up by her hands, and she placed his head down into the water, singing a wordless song.

  TWO

  I never loved him and still don't but neither have I been able to forget him. Sometimes I hated him, often pitied him, but, despite everything, he's still the one I think about and remember best all these years later. I never forget the ones who loved me, and he loved me most. That much I know.

  ***

  I met him when he was sixteen, a lifetime ago, back out of town at the far edge of the woods with a gastank in one hand and matches in the other, cigarette in his teeth, that oversized black peacoat he always wore. I went on many walks back then to hide my own smoking from my parents. Wandering through the woods with headphones on sometimes singing quiet like to myself if I was really lost. A way to keep the trees friendly and wolves at bay. Someone told me that one time or I dreamt it or made it up but there was some notion that a song would keep the wolves away. Might not have even been wolves in those woods but I sang anyway to keep myself together. It's dangerous to fall apart in the woods, especially in November like it was, all the fallen leaves and the orange and brown ones still clinging to branches. If I fell apart then, I would get trampled along with the brittle leaves covering the forest like a shag carpet.

  I was lost then, I think, so I sang but my eyes never saw h
im till he heard me. When I walk my eyes fall to my feet. I don't try but it's always been the way I walk, slow and downcast. Often people misconceive it for melancholy but I never have thought of myself as depressive. A slow walker, yes, and one who needs to keep her eyes on the ground in case it surprises her, yes, that, too, but not sorrowful. That's one of those ways life miscommunicates, one of those ways that people get the wrong idea about one another. Sometimes I think that's what happened to us for all those years, you and I, we never rightly understood what the other meant or wanted. Slow and down mean forlorn but never did I think that and now it's so much a part of my gait that I see no need to change.

  He heard me before he saw me and he saw me before I did him. He stood gaping at me with that big dumb smile of his, real toothy, the cigarette bit down on, the smoke making his eye close, the gas, the matches. My headphones still on, I didn't hear me gasp but you said I near fell over. You, the exaggerator extraordinaire.

  I dropped my cigarette, 'What are you doing out here?' My voice came breathless.

  You laughed the way you did then, that stupid huh huh, 'Who're you?'

  'Are you burning down the forest?'

  You looked from hand to hand, back to me, spit out your cigarette, and kept smiling. 'No,' was all you said.

  'Yes, you are.'

  'Yes, I will, but not yet.' You laughed again.

  Twilight descended and you said, 'Shouldn't you be heading home now?'

  'Not till you promise not to burn the woods down.'

  'What good's the promise of a stranger.' Not a question and you stepped toward me.

  'What's your name?'

  Your smile stopped, eyebrows knit, one halfraised because you never learnt how.

  'If we know each other's name then we're no longer strangers. I'm Virginia.'

  'Virginia,' a whisper just audible, you nodded, undid the cap and started pouring gas. I told you not to until I screamed but you kept on pouring and laughing, staring over your shoulder at me like this was a game until I chased after you. You feigned threats of burning me, too, splashing the gas near me while I chased and screamed until I pushed you down, the gas all over my hands and your shirt and hair, that dumb laughter turned to the real kind, the kind that stuck with you into adulthood, high and womanly.