words by Elena Liu, art by Riese Carlson
Today we put Lover’s body in the ground. It was some time between day and night. It was something between the end of everything and nothing at all. Lover was a dead man long before his heart took its last tremble. Hope crawled into his body like those prairie dogs that used to dash around these valleys. It burrowed into his chest, clutched his heart, and died there within him. And that was the beginning of the end. The rot spread fast. It was quiet, it was in his bones and in his blood. It was the languor of his gaze, the coldness of his touch, the slough of those wounds that never healed.
To see through his eyes would have been to see the world as it once was. Where the grasslands met the marshes was his home. We laid in the arms of the earth’s embrace in the dry seasons, the open sky wrapped around us. In the wet months he’d venture alone into the marshes, and return with vibrant stories of the children, the statuesque egrets, the minks and the marsh rabbits. The children made him feel alive. From a melancholy childhood, Lover found the joy of youth in the little ones of the neighborhood.
Lover was the light that graced the green and golden hills, he was the song of the meadowlarks woven amongst the soft breeze. Remember that the prairie dogs would kiss their kin in greeting. The warmth and gentleness of that embrace, that was Lover. To stand at the ridgelines and bear your soul to great untethered air, the great beyond, that was Lover.
But then the dogs went away with the birds and the breeze, the light and the life, when the poison laid its veins into the land. It was as if the earth had tilted from its axis, sliding the grasslands and the prairies into an eternal torpor. In his mind Lover beheld the glorious day, everlasting summer, yet the taste of death, unrelenting winter, was all that each morning offered. The tension never eased. Suddenly this vast land was not so free anymore.
Wading through the parched marshes he searched for the children. He searched for himself. Hope stirred in his heart when he saw the children in the distant fog. The fire of life flickered into flame. Yearning to heal from his fear in their innocent radiance, Lover stepped closer to watch them play, a murmur of a smile touched his face. The figures of their small bodies hovered over a smaller one yet. A corpse in the mud. Eyes wide, mouth open, filling with the wet earth as it sank slowly. The living turned to look at the man, the distance in their eyes greater than the distance between them.
Suddenly, Lover was very scared. As he ran back to me that fear became paranoia, and the paranoia became madness.
“The children are gone,” he whispered.
A fault line tears.
“The children,” he cried, “They’re gone!”
A stress fracture fissures through his ribs.
A streak of lightning rips open the sky.
Hope had been pierced through the heart.
The nature of Lover, the very composition of man, came undone. Is this what it is for the soul to decompose? At what point did Lover truly die?
Today we put Lover’s body in the ground. Let us remember his life. He is what it means to love. He is the essence of the good of humanity and he suffered as such. Lover, find forgiveness. Forgive yourself. Forgive the world. Forgive how deeply you love and how deeply you hurt. At last, you will have peace.
