Titanic
The indoor trees, their decorative, green-leafed gloves, reach up to the chandeliered ceiling, the way a child reaches up to her mother to say, “Please lift me up, closer to you, I want to see, I want to see the sea,” and mother lifts her daughter into her arms and points to the sea, which opens toward the sky like an upturned gray umbrella, ready to catch the rain, but the mid-April day, bright as a distant, glittering shore, is rainless, and mother says, “Oh how you’ve grown heavy, my little one,” as she lowers the child to the cabin floor and the child begins to cry, “Mother, Mother, I want to see the sea, again” and tears begin streaming down the child’s white, moon-round face, like streaks of paint scumbled against an iceberg’s waterline, while in the afternoon’s crisp air, the trees’ leaves wave at the smooth, gray sea a kind of goodbye they will, of course, never say.
Even the Trees
Why don’t you go outside and get some fresh air, Randal? It’s not good to stay indoors and vanish. There was no arguing with Aunt Jane. Of course, the new apparatus had arrived and was dancing, just like fun, in the living room. Each volt, an increment of folded alarm, seemed to grasp my strategic chemicals. The operating instructions however, were written in cubic cruelty. I attached the tiny bits to the grand surfaces, then activated the magneto resistive random access memory. There, I thought, at least that’s taken care of. But no sooner had I smoothed the checkered romance of its audible heroic overload, than Aunt Jane roared from the kitchen, It’s a splendid day for a hasty lifestyle emulation, don’t you think, Randal? Who in their right mind could argue with Aunt Jane? The sun was shrieking, the cat had bolted to the unwitting neighbors, and Jane had the most definitive whistle. I tell you, simply everyone looked up to her. Even the trees.
Brad Rose was born and raised in southern California, and lives in Boston. His poetry and fiction have appeared in print and on-line at: sleetmagagazine.com, San Pedro River Review, Off the Coast, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, Imagination and Place, Tattoo Highway, Monkeybicycle, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Literary Magazine, and other publications. Links to his poetry and fiction can be found at: http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/