Violin Read Online Free Page B

dark hair loose and gone, her bones long since tumbled in the back of the vault, as other coffins came to rest in her spot, but in this dream I range them round me to hold as if she were here, Mother, in a dark red dress, with her dark hair and he—my lately dead father, wax probably still, buried without a tie because he had wanted none and I took it off him right there beside the coffin and unbuttoned his shirt, knowing how much he had hated ties, and his limbs were whole and neat with undertakers’ fluids or who knows, perhaps within they were alive already with all earth’s tender mouths, come to mourn, devour and then depart, and she, the smallest one, my beautiful one, cancer-bald yet lovely as an angel born hairless and perfect, but then let me give her back her long golden hair that fell out because of the drugs, her hair that was so fine to brush and brush, strawberryblond, the prettiest little girl in all the world, flesh of my flesh—my daughter dead so many years now she’d be a woman if she had lived—
    Dig deep … let me lie with you, let us lie here, all of us together.
    Lie with us, with Karl and me. Karl’s a skeleton already!
    Open lies this grave with all of us so tenderly and happily together. There is no word for union as gentle and total as this, our bodies, our corpses, our bones, so heavily snuggled together.
    I know no separation from anyone. Not Mother, not Father, not Karl, not Lily, not all the living and all the dead as we are one—kin—in this damp and crumbling grave, this private secret place of our own, this deep chamber of earth where we may rot and mingle as the ants come, as the skin is covered over with mold.
    That doesn’t matter.
    Let us be together, no face forgotten, laughter of each one clear as it ran some twenty years ago or twice that long, laughter lilting as the music of a ghostly violin, an uncertain violin, a perfect violin, our laughter our music that blended minds and souls and bound us all forever.
    Fall softly on this great soft secret snuggling grave, my warm and singing rain. What is this grave without rain? Our gentle southern rain.
    Fall soft with kisses not to scatter this embrace in which we are living—I and they, the dead, as one. This crevice is our home. Let the drops be tears like song, more sound and lull than water, for I would have nothing here disturbed, but only lustrous sweet, among you all forever. Lily, snuggle against me now, and Mother let me burrow my face in your neck, but then we are one, and Karl has his arms round us all, and so does Father.
    Flowers, come. There is no need to scatter broken stems or the crimson petals. No need to bring them big bouquets all tied with shining ribbon.
    Here the earth will celebrate this grave; the earth will bring its wild thin grass, its nodding blooms of simple buttercups and daisies and poppies, colors blue and yellow and pink, the mellow shades of the rampant untended and eternal garden.
    Let me snuggle against you, let me lie in your arms, let me assure you that no outward sign of death means anything to me as much as love and that we lived, you and I, once, all of us, alive, and I would not be anywhere now but with you here in this slow and damp and safe corruption.
    That consciousness follows me down to this final embrace is a gift! I am intimate with the dead, and yet I live to know it and savor it.
    Let trees bow down to hide this place, let trees form over my eyes a dense and thickening net, not green but black as if it snared the night, so shut away the last prying eye, or vantage point, as the grass grows high—so that we may be alone, just us, you and I, those whom I so adored and cannot live without.
    Sink. Sink deep into the earth. Feel the earth enclose you. Let the clods seal our quietude. I want nothing else.
    And now, bound up with you and safe, I can say, Hell to all that tries to come between us.
    Come, the steps of strangers on the stairs.
    Break the lock, yes, break the wood, and