hydrochloricacd

His tiny feet indifferently pushed against the sidewalk allowing his feet to sink into the creases. He stubbed his little toes on every crack, chipping his minuscule toenails. His delicate feet stomped softly upon the ground as babies tend to do as they familiarize themselves with how to pedantically put one foot in front of the other.   His legs pushed him down the street. Slowly, jerking his baby-walker with every gentle stomp. His round plump cheeks, that would fit so perfectly in the cup of one’s hands, sagged and hung below his round plush chin dragging down the delicate skin beneath his eyes. His mouth drooped slightly in a frown and his eyes, his eyes. How alert, yet apathetic they were. His eyes, his eyebrows arched backwards, bending harshly like a stiff old man doing a backbend, whose rigid knees can no longer bear the weight of his own body and his arms quiver from the depreciated state they’ve fallen into. He no longer tried to keep his eyes open, for they merely floated on the tiny pool of tears that rimmed his lower lid. He was breathing. I could feel his tiny rib cage, protruding just a little too much for a child of his age. His heart beat just a little too slow.

He was but an infant. Why is he alone? No child should ever look so emaciated, so scared, so impassive and unresponsive to the world around him. He was breathing. He pulled for each breath; every breath was a fight he so longed to lose. His eyes, his lackluster eyes saw nothing. He held a fish in his dimpled hands. I watched from across the street.

“Where is your mother?”

Stupid woman. The child cannot speak.

“She said she would be back. Someday. Someday she’ll be back, she said.”

His eyes.

His eyes made my heart cringe and collapse on its own weight: made my stomach flutter and suffer ineffaceable spasms. His round cheeks would fit so perfectly in the cup of my hand. Why was he holding that fish? I scream for him from across the street, but his tiny feet only continue to hurt themselves on the scratches of the sidewalk. Step. Roll. Step. Roll. Step. Roll. His little feet smacking the pavement. His eyes. His mouth. Too sordid an expression for a child of his age. My heart, my heart ran for him and my feet followed. Faster and faster my legs pumped to catch him. Step. Roll. Step. Roll. I ran until the muscles in my legs burned with acid and my lungs burned cold. Step. Roll. Step. Roll. Stop. I fell to my knees and placed my hands in the nook of his arms and lifted him from the baby-walker. His neck gave up, his head rolled to the left and his paper thin eyelids fell shut. Softly, so softly did his shoulders ease in my grasp. The fish slipped from his dimpled hands, and my stomach went with it. I gripped the tiny clothes that clung to his tiny back and pressed him to my chest and cried.

"Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow..."

"I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain."

"Soul and body, body and soul- how mysterious they were! There was an animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where they fleshly impluse ceased, or the physical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union or spirit with matter was a mystery also."

 She summoned the foam to her feet and welcomed her child with her warm radiance that reflected off of the ocean and lit the stars.

The erratic twitching of the stars between red and blue always stimulated her interest, her curiosity. Oh, how curious she was. No amount of knowledge could ever consummate her curiosity, just how no amount of stars could ever consummate the midnight sky. Oh, how omniscient the midnight sky is.

But the stars weren't twitching tonight

She played with the fragmented waves that drew her back. She blinded herself to all things around her as she examined her feet and let the fractured pieces make her feel as if she were falling backwards-standing up- at the same speed gravity would pull her. No faster. No slower.

She smiled as she welcomed her child that so warmly played with her feet.

She'll remember this moment forever; the night he promised her to take her to the lighthouse, to the midnight ocean to visit the midnight stars she misses so much. She'll never forget that promise, the ocean will forever remind her of this night for it carries the story of her life.

The stars shone white, suspended upon strings at variant distances to remind her of the milestones she's surpassed with a flick of her wrist and the predicaments she's tripped over leaving her ephemeral print in the sand.

Tonight they left prints. They looked at them and laughed. Oh, how they laughed
Tonight he held her and she cried. Oh, how she cried

"Are you gonna miss me?"

Oh, how she cried.

First and foremost, I would like to say that those of you who were disappointed by Iron &Wine, you weren’t looking, you weren’t listening.

On with the story:

“You’re a good dose of God,” he said to me as I finished wiping the tears from my eyes. The tears that arose from the familiar feeling of home, a feeling I had allowed myself to so easily forget.

“I remember you,” he said to me with a hug to promise me that he’d remain with me forever, and that he always had been.

“I love you,” we said to one another, assuring each other that we were the only ones that ever mattered because everyone was with was at that moment when we hugged a stranger and made her cry.

And there was Sam, with the taciturn understanding of sadness whose eyes radiated the most beautiful spectrum of blue; with the quiet reserve that exposed his beautiful shyness and humble modesty; with the serene presence that embraced us all and brought us all home.

I think to all of you that were “disappointed” you were too busy fucking around and not paying attention and not slowing down to completely take in all he was offering.  I have to say one of my favorite components of the show were the transitions, the little jam sessions they would have in between songs that would organize itself into another song, it wasn’t a “jazz” show nor was it too “rockish.” It was the perfect dose of versatility to allow the audience to gently dance, or sway or just stand still if they wanted.

And then he smiled. It was solitary and fleeting, like a warm stroke of a bell in silence that caused all around me to grab their chests where their hearts live. The stage went dark with only a blue light shining behind him giving the illusion of a blue aura that reflected off of his white shirt; the illusion of a blue halo that sparkled on every stray hair as he modestly looked down as we all clapped our hands in hopes to reciprocate the feeling of rejoice that he had incited within us.

So to those who were “disappointed”… fuck you.