#hpeezie writes

[adjoining]

the silence of sunflowers

We walk like cattle. Like cattle to a field to chew our cud, to flick flies with our tails. With chains clicking and clanking, linking our ankles and wrists together, we are animals. A herd rounded up for slaughter. Percussive sounds of bare feet on hard-packed earth, the occasional scuff of a heel against rocks. Mud squishes and squelches, painting dirty ankles dark brown as it latches onto toes. 

It’s almost musical, I think. The broad, smelly brute ahead of me (a murderer; raped and quartered the priest’s daughter, I overheard him say) pounds into the puddles, no care that he splashes himself and me. But the footsteps are perfectly timed. For every boom of his feet, I triple-step to the side: a waltz to a death march.

How fitting.

How very fitting indeed.

Of course, Mother always told me this would be my end: a disowned brat of a boy in a train of criminals ushered toward the hangman’s noose. I had hoped that she was wrong, but a part of me always knew that my life would end with a rope around my neck. I could almost hear the crack of the platform, the twang of the noose pulled taut, the snap of the bones in my neck as my soul traveled wherever. Hell, probably. 

Delicate feet, delicate hands, delicate tongue. Mother claimed that when I was a toddling boy, I had been kissed by Lucifer himself. She loved her gossip, and she loved her religion. She claimed that I would lay the foundations of tribulation. Apparently if you have an affinity for picking pockets and reciting sacrilegious poetry, you are halfway to hell already. To her, I was the Antichrist. That’s what she called me to her friends. If there truly is a God, then he made me too pretty for my own good, too wily for anyone else’s good.

Tis a shame the world should be deprived of such beauty, such talent, such ambition. Idealism births Ambition, the Father of Deception and Perseverance. I hold a king’s share of all. 

I was born to be a royal. I dreamt of fine silks lighter than cloud fluff and golden crowns twisted like laurels to rest on my brow. Gold pairs marvelously with pale skin untouched by sun-burdened labor. Gold does not pair marvelously with barley farmers. If there truly is a God, he gave me too lofty of dreams for a farm boy. And gold does not grow from barley sheathes. It sleeps in pockets and purses of pretentious prats who misuse it. 

Even now, wrists chafed raw and blisters bursting yellow clouded pus from the pressure of the manacles, the itch in my fingers starts again. They almost vibrate, humming and stirring with such ferocity that I clamp them underneath my chin. Anything to stop that desire, that burning yearning to take, take, take.

There’s something in the pocket of Ugly Murderer in front of me. Like a desperate ocean navigator to the Pole Star, my eyes spot the thump of something in his trouser pockets. What could this deplorable creature be concealing? It’s certainly too round to be a useful weapon. Too light in the pocket to be of considerable weight. What could it be?

Only one way to find out. Picking this troll’s pocket cannot possibly result in a worse fate than the one I am about to meet.

There’s a large puddle of mud four lengths in front of him. With a glance to the left, a dart to the right, I release my hands, a gentle smile curling on my face for that rush of excitement, that promise of a conquest. Two and a half lengths now. Stepping the slightest bit closer to the man, I ready my right hand. One length now. The execution awaits.

Years of practice and dedication guides my right hand. My fingers are like antennae to gently brush against his threadbare pants to grip whatever hides in the shadows of his pocket. As it slips in, my foot connects with his left heel as his other foot stumbles into the puddle, throwing the man’s balance. He lurches forward, preparing to be painted the color of the mud that sucks on his knees as he timbers down. As gravity claims him, my fingers connect with the item, grasping onto it between the fore and middle finger. He lands with a thud and a splash, a surprised groan huffed from his tooth-chipped mouth. 

“My sincerest apologies, sir,” I say, tamping down the smirk that threatens to split my face in two. My hand curls around the picked item, concealing it with a casual clasp of my hands. The telltale clank of the soldiers’ armor reaches my ears, and I watch with growing mirth as the brute, face painted red like summer strawberries, rises from the ground to (no doubt) deal out a pummeling. His hairy arm reels back, the promise of a smack to ring through the air. Yet, before his fist reaches my unflinching jaw, two soldiers clamp his arms to his sides.

“Bloody coward!” he screams, spittle flying from his mouth and dribbling down his mud-slathered chin. “I’ll tear you to—” 

A studded fist connects to his stomach. His words and breath explode from his mouth in a huff of air, and I cock my head as one soldier unlocks him from the chain that keeps us prisoners in a line. They then drag the still-spitting man to the front.

Tis a shame, really. I would have much rather preferred being escorted to the front lines. Now the oaf would die a whole few minutes before me. He would also die with an empty stomach, now.

I toss the stale piece of bread I snatched from his pocket up and down in my palm. The piece is so old that no flecks drop from the crust. Such a thing is a delicacy, though. Perhaps I’ll save it for a better time. Perhaps in another hour before they slip a noose around my neck.

I breathe in a deep breath, the cool air filling the expanse of my chest. It’s the kind of air thick with water. It’s the kind of air that sticks my threadbare shirt to my skin and turns my limp hair into snarls of tangled blonde strands. It’s the kind of air that ushers out days of spring rainfall and threatens to drown the wildflowers just starting to bloom in the fields. Through the smattering of trees on the side of the road, I could see bright tickles of bluebells growing in hordes on the hillsides. It was like a sea of purple. If I closed my eyes, I could see myself laying with them, a finger stuck between the worn pages of an old poetry book I had swiped from the church after a Sunday service when I was eight. The flowers would hang down and sigh with me. I wonder if the bells of Notre Dame hang like bluebells from their towers. 

The one regret I shall shoulder with me into death: never finding the beauty of worlds outside of England.

I am snapped from my thoughts when I see a soldier march back to me, and I quickly shove the bread in my pocket. In his hands, he carries a chain connected to someone that he yanks behind him. As he leans down to connect it to the main one, I take in the newcomer. And my head cocks to the side. She cannot have seen more than seven winters. The pale grey dress she wears hangs in tatters from her bony shoulders. She is all waxy skin and pointy bones. Black circles pool underneath her eyes, faintly concealed by hair that looks like it hasn’t felt the teeth of a comb since she was born. She lacks the healthy, full cheeks of a child her age, and the sallow pull of her skin on her face shows every crevice of her skull. If she tried, the could slip her wrists from her shackles. But from the droop on her shoulders, I see that she has lost her will.

If she is Atlas, she has dropped the sky. 

We resume our walk to the gallows soon after the soldier links her in front of me. There is no more boom of heavy feet in front of me to dance to; only the drag of her bare toes on the ground. Her feet hold silence in the din of a death march. Despite her lack of will, she is gentle. Her silence is velvet and my feet are sandpaper. If people were masterpieces, she is a marble statue: all cracks and edges smoothed down, heeded, bended, broken by hands that have, undoubtedly, given her over to the fate of criminals.

Her silence is shattered only in the briefest sound of sniffles. Before I know it, my fingers curl around the measly piece of bread. I step with light feet to her left side. Bending at the waist in a half-bow, I present it to her.

“Bread for milady?” I say. She spooks to a stop, eyes darting from the proffered bread to me. 

“W-what?” Her eyes are heavy with overflowing tears, but the brown shines through. Her shoulders say defeat but her eyes speak life.

A frown crosses my mouth and creases my brow. “Now, my dear lady,” I encourage her to continue walking, and she stutters to a start again, “surely you know a delicacy when you spot it? Why, this is bread of the highest quality: reaped from the golden fields of our King himself, threshed and grinded by the same hands that prepare feasts for visiting nobles. Would you want to deny yourself such a pleasure?”

Her sorrowful eyes bunch together, contemplating me. Then with tentative hands, she wraps her fingers around the bread. Sniffs it. Takes a cautious nibble.

She crinkles her nose. “… It tastes like sweat.”

A snort almost explodes from my nose, but I tamp it down. “Ah, that’s simply the seasoning. Pure sea salt imported straight from imperial Qing China.”

“There’s mud on it.”

“Purely for aesthetic pleasure, my lady.”

“Is that mold?”

“Aged like a fine gruyere cheese.”

“I think there’s a hair on it.” “From the head of the king himself.”

Her tears are long gone now, replaced by eyelids narrowing to slits. “Are you lying to me?”

“Me? Lie? Heaven forbid.” I clasp my hands to my chest, bending halfway at the waist in the best bow I can muster in chains. “I am but a humble pickpocket. No lies lie in my vocabulary. And to whom do I have the honor of conversing with?” I gather her hand in mine, ready to press a noble kiss to her bony, muddy knuckles.

A rose blush blooms on her cheeks when I shoot a dazzling smirk at her. She drops her head, whether in shyness or in shame, I know not which. But I do know that she will not tell me. She shakes her head, greasy blonde hair concealing her face as she pulls her hand from mine while the other tosses the bread to the ground. I almost berate her but think twice. Her focus returns to her walking feet. Silence claims her voice and I can almost hear the hollow sound of her footsteps jarring through her body. I can hear it bounce between her ribs, rattling them and skipping her heart beats faster and faster and faster.

Overhead, the clouds blend white into grey. The wind yanks at my hair, throwing wisps into my mouth. They stick to the cracks on my lips and I wet them, dehydration forming canyons of dried blood. I suck it out. In the distance, thunder rumbles. What a lovely image my mind conjures: my corpse swinging, dripping from rain, life slipping between my cold fingers as my soul puddles beneath my hanging body. Those poor soldiers will be tired, hauling the waterlogged bodies to the criminals’ graveyard. How horrible for them.

I loathe them. 

The girl’s head still hangs beside me. Her neck is so severely angled that it already appears that a noose has already broken it. My heart heaves a sudden pang. 

“’What shall I call thee?’” The words, not my own, twist in my mouth. They taste sweet to these pauper’s lips, and they fly with a melody I cannot fathom of my own thoughts. I aim them towards the darkening clouds, but the words dance to meet her ears. “’Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old…’” From the corner of my eye, the girl raises her head. Straightens her shoulders.

“What?”

“’What shall I call thee?’” I repeat, poem giddy on my tongue. I level my look to her eyes. “’Sweet joy I call thee; Thou dost smile. I sing the while, Sweet joy befall thee.’” A true smile dawns on my face. “Tis a poem by a fellow named Blake. Since you do not deign to provide me with your name, I shall give you one: Sweet Joy.”

“… Sweet Joy?”

“While thou smile, I shall sing the while.”

“But… You haven’t seen me smile.”

“Yet,” I say. “I haven’t seen you smile yet. But I would be willing to bet a rich man’s pockets that it rivals that of sunflowers.”

She blushes once more. 

A chuckle rumbles in my throat. Her silence is sweet now. “Would you like to hear another?” She gives a single, tentative nod, and I clear my throat, beat my chest twice, and begin.

“’Ah Sun-flower!’” She, and every other criminal in the vicinity, jump at the sudden boom of my voice. The power one can wield with a simple voice is the mightiest weapon. “’Weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun: Seeking after that sweet golden clime, Where the travelers journey is done.’” My voice is a kite that follows the breeze of poetry. “Where the Youth pined away with desire, and the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire…’” She tenses at the uttering of the word graves, “…Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.’”

I can hear the phantom claps of applause from months ago ringing through my ears. If I close my eyes, I can see them, the people, cheering for me, for just one more poem, one more verse. They call for words brighter than the sunlight, prettier than stained glass windows. They seek more than dirt and church. They seek beauty and freedom. They seek poetry. I seek poetry. I seek freedom.

A shame I sought pockets more than both of these.

I look to my side and see that my young companion has fallen silent once more. But this silence is sweet. It’s the kind of silence you can taste. It tastes like summer citrus after a hot day in the fields. Sink your teeth into the skin and swirl the juices around your tongue. Swallow the rinds and lick what drips down your arms. 

She is the one to break it this time. “I am afraid of the dark.”

The words slip from her mouth so suddenly, they almost slither past my ears. But instead of replying, I beckon for more with my head. 

She still does not look at me, but continues in a still, quiet voice. “Mother always told me that monsters lived in the dark. She said that if I went out at night, the demons would get me. I don’t want the demons to get me.” It’s the kind of voice that only children use when they have been caught doing something naughty. Quiet, timid, and otherworldly. Some of the words catch on hooks in her voice. They crack against disuse from imprisonment. “When she died, Father told me I needed to sleep without a candle. But demons will get me if it’s dark. He hid all the candles in the house.”

“How did you sleep at night, sweet joy?”

“I screamed,” she says. “I screamed and screamed, hoping it would keep the demons away. But Father said I was already possessed by a demon if I didn’t like the night. I don’t want to be possessed by a demon. I don’t think I’m possessed by a demon. Do you think I’m possessed by a demon?” Her eyes, wide with desperation, glimmer at me once more with burgeoning tears. Her fingers grip the sleeves of my shirt, wrinkling underneath her nails.

Another pang ruptures through my heart in one, deft wave. Overhead, the clouds make a solid ceiling of grey. “Of course not, sweet joy.”

“He told me that death is just darkness. He told me…” She gulps, and her hands begin to rattle in the links again. We walk a few more paces before she speaks again. “He told me that a child like me isn’t worth raising.”

The silence around is now bitter. The poems once uttered now leave bitter after-traces on my tongue. Ahead, I can see a bridge in the distance. If it’s the bridge that I think it is, then time is running thin. We will reach it in another mile.

“Do—” She swallows again, “do you think it will be swift?”

No. “Yes.”

“Do… Do you think it will be painful?”

Yes. “No.” “…I don’t want to die.”

I almost lie. I almost say I don’t want to die either, but that would be another lie. I’ve lied to her a fair too many times. She does not deserve more lies from a thief. She does not deserve death from a noose. And perhaps I do not deserve this fate either. Perhaps none in this band of criminals deserve this fate (aside from ugly brute; gods be praised he shall be the first of us offed). But seven-years-old is a flower yet to bloom, the barest light of dawn before a sunrise. I am high noon, and the others round us are various stages of dusk and sunsets. She cannot leave a mark on the world if her footprints do not sink into the mud.

I hear the pitter of the first drops of rainfall tap against the ground. One lands on the side of my forehead and slides down, following the curve of my cheekbone to trace along the edge of my jawline to land on the still-drying lane. I brush the sleeve of my shirt against it and it comes away smeared with dirt. Gasping, I furiously rub my face in the crook of my elbow, wiping every exposed area against the fabric.

“What are you doing?” she questions, voice rising in pitch over the words.

“I have spent… my whole life… covered… in dirt…” I grind out between swipes of shirt over my mouth. “I will not die… with dirt on my… beautiful face.”

A laugh blooms from her mouth, and my arm halts in its motions. It breaks from her mouth in a gust of air, then grows in volume until she spurts into giggles, and then back down to a breathy laugh. Her eyes are closed; there are no wrinkles creasing around it, and I wonder if she has ever laughed in her short life. She laughs with no care for who hears her. It races through the trees and shifts mountains with its power. She laughs as if she cares not for the future.

“You are so vain!” Her laughter increases, and I begin to wonder if she is laughing more from the impending terror than the humor of my beauty (which is not humorous at all, thank you very much). But I just chuckle along with her. Who can deny the contagious laughter of a child?

Our giggles subside until we are simply smiling. They hold the memory of what might be the last laugh we ever experience. I wonder when she last laughed. She deserves days full of laughter, full of poetry, full of light. I would not have her be alone. I would not have her be afraid. Bitterness seeps into my mind. No, I cannot allow myself to crack. I am supposed to welcome death; bitterness be damned.

I look to her to distract myself. 

“That’s the sunflower smile I have been waiting for.” Her face blushes deeply, but she just smiles. She smiles at me. She smiles for me. “Prettier than anything I’ve ever seen.”

The silence around us is soft. The rain continues to fall, and the clouds continue to glow a hazy grey, but it is soft. I wonder if I could. If I could… If I could stretch my fingers to the sky one last time and drag them through the daytime winds. Would I feel the wind tangle and knot itself between the gaps? Could I twine them together into paintings? The only thing my fingers have ever created are empty pockets and poetry books with missing pages. 

I wonder if Mother found all the stolen pages stuffed in the floorboards of the barn. I folded and tucked them between the cracks underneath Old Milly’s stable. Each carries a fragment of dandelion fluff for every dream I have wished. The margins drip with black ink words, smeared with my hopes. But the hopes of a nineteen-year-old pickpocket are silly affairs. The only fate that has ever awaited me is the one I face now. This is the path I placed my boots on and traveled on until this moment. To this moment with her. To this moment with this girl…

This seven-year-old girl who will die because she fears the dark.

How cruel of her bastard father. How cruel of life. 

The atmosphere shifts suddenly. Tension wraps its thorny tendrils around us all, and I look over the heads of those ahead. We have come to an abrupt halt, everyone standing still as statues.

We have reached the Bridge of Sighs. And just beyond that: the gates to the graveyard.

The first five criminals, including ugly brute, stand at the edge of the Bridge where it meets the gates. I watch as soldiers unchain them one by one. Through the breeze, I hear an elderly woman begging, pleading. The soldiers ignore her cries, shoving her through the gates and through the graveyard. There is a hill full of unmarked gravestones they must traverse through before they reach the gallows. The contraptions themselves sit on a taller hill behind it. They loom like towers. I can see the criminals lining up behind each noose.

A few minutes pass in tense, ugly silence. This is the kind of silence that is not quiet. It’s the kind of silence that bears all things, hears all things, and devours all things. Suddenly, the unmistakable crack of the door dropping out rings through the air. I can almost hear the strained, final breaths of the criminals. Ugly brute has received what he has deserved. The soldiers return and begin to unlink the next five. I count quickly, numbering off seventeen or so before we… before…

She hyperventilates beside me, deep, gasping breaths and she is terrified. She is so so terrified. I see it in her eyes as she looks up at me through her tears. She is desperate and she is falling apart and she is so so terrified.

“I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—”

“Shh, shh, sweet joy,” I whisper. I bend down on one knee, my hands moving to her face where she swipes furiously at the tears. I place the palms of my hands on each of her cheeks, and I realize for the first time that she has freckles like pinpricks of stars, a needlepoint of constellations. “You’ll rub your face raw if you continue like that.” In the air, a second crack of the gallows. The rain begins to fall in sheets, and I cannot tell tear from raindrop.

“I don’t want to cry anymore,” she says, taking more gasping breaths. “Father said crying is weakness.”

“Well, your father is a fool and a liar. Don’t you know that tears freely given contain powerful magic?” I say. Her brows furrow at me. She shakes her head, not trusting her voice. “Every tear that you cry, wherever it lands, shall grow into a wildflower.”

Her hands, tiny things that I could swallow with just one palm, wrap around my wrists. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”

Another crack fills the air. The soldiers come back for the next group. I aim a playful frown at her. “Are you so quick to mistrust me, my lady?” 

We move forward, shuffling our way onto the Bridge. Beneath us, the creek babbles, ignorant to the sorrows and fears it courses underneath. She shakes her head at me, tears now falling in cascades. They slide through my fingers, and I let them drop to the ground. “W-why don’t you cry, then?”

I pull on my best smile, but it droops in the corners, weighed down. “My tears make thorns, sweet joy. I am stitched and knitted by bitterness. But you?” I hear the third crack resound through the air. “You are kind. You are beautiful. You have given this pickpocket joy before he meets his end. That makes an authentic heart. That makes tears full of wildflowers. You can cry flowers for me.”

I hear the soldiers come for us.

I move my hands from her face to clasp her own shaking hands in mine. “’To see a World in a Grain of Sand…’” One final poem for her. I press a kiss to the tips of her fingers. 

“’And a Heaven in a Wild Flower…’” I can see the soldiers now. 

“’Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand…’” Her eyes grow wide with fear, but I hold her tight. I will not let her go.

“And Eternity in an hour…’” The soldiers unchain us from the others. 

“Come, sweet joy,” I say, words squeezing past the stone in my throat. “Let us embrace the Eternity that awaits us.”

This is the deafening silence I have been waiting for. It is the kind that swallows all sound, all sobs, all footsteps. It has even swallowed the wind. It sucks up the rainfall. Silence is a sword plunged halfway to the hilt. In a few moments, it will be sunk straight through.

I do not focus on the gravestones. I do not focus on the looming gallows. I do not focus on the corpses. I do not focus on the rain. I do not focus on the voice laying out our crimes. I do not focus on anything except for the seven-year-old girl at my side who still clutches onto my sleeves. I focus on the girl who should not be here. 

She should not be here. 

She is about to be hanged for the crime of being unloved by her own father.

She. Should. Not. Be. Here.

I feel the boards of the stairs leading to the gallows platform creak under my feet. They do not creak under hers. She is not old enough for stairs to creak under her. She should not be here. 

The soldiers place us behind one noose each, a necklace to paint a ring of purple bruises around our necks. I look out. I look out past the graveyard where I will meet my eternal rest. Past the others standing on the Bridge of Sighs who will lay beside me in death. Past the muddy road where I met a seven-year-old girl who should not be here. 

I look at a world that gave me nothing. It birthed me and kicked dirt in my face. It signed my death warrant the moment I was born a peasant boy to a widowed mother who gave her only money to a church that did not want her or her bastard son. But it did give me poetry. At least I will always have poetry. And I will always have the memory of her.

The wet, frayed noose slips over my head, the knot pushed harsh against my neck. 

I turn my head to her. She stands on a block because she is too short to reach the noose. She is quiet, but the tears still fall freely from her face. She should not be here.

“Sweet joy,” I call out one last time. Her eyes meet mine.

“Make wildflowers for me.”

A final crack.

[adjoining]

if i posted my short story i wrote for a class portfolio, would anyone want to read it?

it features a nameless pickpocket, a seven year old girl, and an execution in 1800’s england