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Saturday, March 5, 2011

In The Bunker

Looking out the bunker window, it can feel like home, in a way. The dingy floral curtains frame the scene outside, reminding of grandma's house. But outside, it isn't home. Everything is still and silent. The cold stings your skin, and will eventually take hold of your bones. The brief sun catches the snow, a blinding symphony of light and silence. The frozen lake is restless under the ice, the dark, dangerous waters anxious to escape their confines. They are alive--endless and unforgiving. 


The few hours of daylight are precious, and often slide by, slipping through our fingers like sand through an hourglass, disappearing into the night--the darkness. Suddenly it is a different world. The silence is all-consuming, the darkness is thick enough to be tangible, pressing on every fibre of our bodies, holding us down. Everything is grey. There is no colour, no movement, except those obsidian waters, seeking prey, always waiting to take, unmoved by love or pleading. They twist and turn to some kind of sinister dance, calling, sighing, silently.


Once, we were a we, marveling at the light, and dark, the silence, and the clarity. You can see for miles in the sun, and everything is constant and unchanging. In the sun, seeing the ice, for just a few moments we are a we again, and this is home. Until the memories twist in, wrapping my consciousness in an icy veil, ceaselessly crushing, unyielding.


I remember that day. The silence was heavy with expectancy, waiting for something to happen. The sun was just a line of fire on the horizon, casting strange shadows on the strangely formed ice. I remember the sound of splintering, and the yell, as if I were hearing it from underwater, distant and delayed. But I knew something was wrong the moment it was no longer silent. Suddenly, the world was disturbed, touched, marked forever with blood. I tried to run. It was like running through sand. Every nerve in my body was firing, every muscle was fighting, but the dark lake was an eternity away. Finally I knelt by the water, filling the twisting black void with my own salty tears. 


He was a rose, trying to find roots in the ice, in me. Thriving in the sun, wilting in the silent stillness. He was my light, my colour, my waltz with destiny. But even a rose cannot be beautiful forever. A rose does not adapt. And there was another waltz more captivating than mine in those twisting waters, so cruel and unforgiving, even for a beautiful, fragile, red, blood-red, rose. 

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