---
She Said, She Said
---
"She said--- "I know what it's like to be dead-- / I know what it is to be sad. / And she's making me feel like I've never been born." --John Lennon
---
The convertable had seen him across this wide country, had ripped through the roads as he took the long way home. In the cool sunset evening, he had the top down.
He couldn't move fast enough as he tore down the road, leaving the brilliant sky behind him as he flew into the dusk. The air whipped past his face, and he pushed into it and past it and on into the distance.
The incredible journey was nearly at an end. He sped through familiar highway, the roads strangely empty and quiet. He could smell the Californian smells and feel the familiar dry tint to the air as it soared past him.
And he noticed the colors-- the green living colors as they glared out of the dimming light. The glowing, boiling orange of the sky cut holes in the hiding brush and made it like a shadow playing, a brilliant glow of black and bright movement in the corner of his eye. He tried to name those colors as he moved.
Rose window flaming. Smoldering nightdream.
Blonde stone brilliance. Hazel-eyed sunset raging.
The trees lining the highways had pulled him through the New England autumn, long days ago. The colors burned there like the dusk colors fading sunshine to night black. Past the ivy clad college walls, past the small towns. past the human places and the living, mountain stones.
The leaves fell in showers over him as he drove. Always moving, flitting onto the leather of the car and his cheeks. Full of wood-smells and color-- the colors cried out like he'd never known. They leapt from the world to him as if they knew him and wanted him and wanted to fly down the road and stay with the car as it sped away from every farm and tobacco shed and into the grains and flat progress of the central farms, where the roads were mileless eternal arrows of asphalt against the midwestern nighttime.
And it pulled him through tunnels and around cities, where he heard the hum of a million souls murmuring their thoughts at the skyscrapers, shuffling through and cycling like the airy leaves in an updraft.
And the birds scattered before the wheels as he hugged a curve, turning off into the silent dull darkness that had settled over the world as he moved.
And the stars spread out over him and he felt them overhead, and felt like he was a part of their progress. And he let the familiar streets huddle close and surround him like wet wool, rush into him and remind him of a million feelings and their sources and then tear it all away. Because it was new again-- new and no memory could ever be as vivid as this night. He was on the other side of a heavy door of his memory, bolted shut and through which no one could ever pass again.
She said it would happen. She said-- she said that the world would change and revolution was the only normalcy. She whispered in her sleep late into the desperate hours of their trysts, that angry blood rushing through her steely veins. She said that he'd understand that it was all burning, that it would always move and change. She was right, the Prophecy Girl. It was like the world, like the seasons spinning in a cycle of its own choosing-- beyond their control. Always revolving and whirling out of the hand like a moth to the streetlights. The wheel of fortune, bringing the righteous down and the low from their dejection like the sole of a bare foot pulling, straining out of the sucking mud.
And he saw the final street sign and turned, his wheel striking a trash can precarious on the curb. It crashed metallic and tin and shattering, spinning away from him into the darkness as he sped down the quiet drive.
And he was elated, strangely. Thrilling pinpricks ran through his hands and heart and veins. Life surged hopeful in his veins. He had thought it all the way through the fiery highways and whispering farmlands. He had thought in moving colors the whole way through, letting the whirling leaves and nodding grain and shining city lights propel him into his inevitable future.
So when he pulled up to the driveway, his heart was light with hope and nervous energy. But it was like that natural, living beauty he'd sensed as he'd crossed the widespread, pregnant land. It was pure. He could hardly grasp that purity because it nearly burned him to touch it, so contrary it was to his entire life and experience, that was locked soundly behind that iron-clad, impossible door of his black past.
And he knocked. And the door opened. His heart flooded with a transcendent calm. And he smiled softly.
"Hello Buffy."
Their eyes met.
---
She Said, She Said
---
"She said--- "I know what it's like to be dead-- / I know what it is to be sad. / And she's making me feel like I've never been born." --John Lennon
---
The convertable had seen him across this wide country, had ripped through the roads as he took the long way home. In the cool sunset evening, he had the top down.
He couldn't move fast enough as he tore down the road, leaving the brilliant sky behind him as he flew into the dusk. The air whipped past his face, and he pushed into it and past it and on into the distance.
The incredible journey was nearly at an end. He sped through familiar highway, the roads strangely empty and quiet. He could smell the Californian smells and feel the familiar dry tint to the air as it soared past him.
And he noticed the colors-- the green living colors as they glared out of the dimming light. The glowing, boiling orange of the sky cut holes in the hiding brush and made it like a shadow playing, a brilliant glow of black and bright movement in the corner of his eye. He tried to name those colors as he moved.
Rose window flaming. Smoldering nightdream.
Blonde stone brilliance. Hazel-eyed sunset raging.
The trees lining the highways had pulled him through the New England autumn, long days ago. The colors burned there like the dusk colors fading sunshine to night black. Past the ivy clad college walls, past the small towns. past the human places and the living, mountain stones.
The leaves fell in showers over him as he drove. Always moving, flitting onto the leather of the car and his cheeks. Full of wood-smells and color-- the colors cried out like he'd never known. They leapt from the world to him as if they knew him and wanted him and wanted to fly down the road and stay with the car as it sped away from every farm and tobacco shed and into the grains and flat progress of the central farms, where the roads were mileless eternal arrows of asphalt against the midwestern nighttime.
And it pulled him through tunnels and around cities, where he heard the hum of a million souls murmuring their thoughts at the skyscrapers, shuffling through and cycling like the airy leaves in an updraft.
And the birds scattered before the wheels as he hugged a curve, turning off into the silent dull darkness that had settled over the world as he moved.
And the stars spread out over him and he felt them overhead, and felt like he was a part of their progress. And he let the familiar streets huddle close and surround him like wet wool, rush into him and remind him of a million feelings and their sources and then tear it all away. Because it was new again-- new and no memory could ever be as vivid as this night. He was on the other side of a heavy door of his memory, bolted shut and through which no one could ever pass again.
She said it would happen. She said-- she said that the world would change and revolution was the only normalcy. She whispered in her sleep late into the desperate hours of their trysts, that angry blood rushing through her steely veins. She said that he'd understand that it was all burning, that it would always move and change. She was right, the Prophecy Girl. It was like the world, like the seasons spinning in a cycle of its own choosing-- beyond their control. Always revolving and whirling out of the hand like a moth to the streetlights. The wheel of fortune, bringing the righteous down and the low from their dejection like the sole of a bare foot pulling, straining out of the sucking mud.
And he saw the final street sign and turned, his wheel striking a trash can precarious on the curb. It crashed metallic and tin and shattering, spinning away from him into the darkness as he sped down the quiet drive.
And he was elated, strangely. Thrilling pinpricks ran through his hands and heart and veins. Life surged hopeful in his veins. He had thought it all the way through the fiery highways and whispering farmlands. He had thought in moving colors the whole way through, letting the whirling leaves and nodding grain and shining city lights propel him into his inevitable future.
So when he pulled up to the driveway, his heart was light with hope and nervous energy. But it was like that natural, living beauty he'd sensed as he'd crossed the widespread, pregnant land. It was pure. He could hardly grasp that purity because it nearly burned him to touch it, so contrary it was to his entire life and experience, that was locked soundly behind that iron-clad, impossible door of his black past.
And he knocked. And the door opened. His heart flooded with a transcendent calm. And he smiled softly.
"Hello Buffy."
Their eyes met.
---