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A Violet Rain
by Lana Bella A violet-haunted rain tumbled down the trickling boughs and leafy bulge, of the violet tree; There, an old man knelt, cowering by the gnarly roots at the bark's edge where a spider web strung wrinkly and wet. Thirty years had come to pass and still, he heard her screams in all his dreams: at times distantly, like muffled sounds trapped in a lidded glass bottle, as if it was fished out and clogged of black water from being interred beneath a floating bed of horsetail reeds; while other times, her keen tempest's howl depleted whole his sanity, parching him from the inside out like a desert spanning over miles without sheltered trees or fresh drinks; then of late, it has constantly been a down-trodden rain coasting this violet tree by the millpond's shore, where plum-hued petals scattered upon a basin swirling of red; in failed swigs of shallow gasps, she fumbled for the cotton hem of his plaid button-down shirt and always caught the marshy waste of the dark, vainly keeping steady upon the last loose scaffolds of her life as it hung across the vacant air; he watched her weak thrashing in numb silence, falling, gurgling, submerging deep into the muck; ever so casually, he flicked away a dull pang of shame as it sloshed, danced, rippled, then at last sunk softly beneath the silent water along with the final breaths bleeding out of her scarlet-painted nails. Here again under the violet rain, that water-logged throaty voice and the few remnants of mortality staggered on prawn-like legs with rawboned hands, reaching out to muffle the paralysis that had started to press backwards into his tongue and down his throat, giving birth to his own strangulation. |
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