Amber Sparks: May We Shed These Human Bodies

Land

The soil is blowing away like loose words; the earth sheds our short history here like skin flakes after a bath. The earth is cleansing itself of us. There is a hungry safety in our movements, like we're scared to move too fast. We might blur ourselves; we might be here then gone, which we suppose will happen someday, but why hurry things along?

The meat of movement fills us beyond question, beyond dream, and our heels dig in the dust in vain. The whole world is a chair of gold and our lives are etched into its seat, like pictures of the future for our ancestors to discover.

War

The guns have been sitting in storage for a very long time. We alone know the location, the combination to enter. We alone know where the ammunition is kept. We alone know how to use these massive weapons, how to roll the girdles over the spiked tires to keep them from sinking into the mud, how many horses it takes to pull them out of the shed and into the field, how to tell which shells will fire what: incendiary charges, high explosive charges, or gas. We alone know the bodies strewn on the grass, casualties of mass action and opposing forces.

We keep these things a secret from the child, because we know how eager she is. But lately, she has been driving us mad with questions, circling while we plow our fields, while we watch television. She keeps asking about the guns, about the last war, about the war before that. She keeps asking us about the body and the soul, and the way the two can fuse together and fall apart.

Is that a war? she asks. We tell her, no, that is a weapon.

She looks to us, this child who is no longer a child. She has forgotten to be a savior, to keep pushing forward. She burns to divide and to kill. She burns to blow another's cells apart with differences. It's time, she says. Tell me how, she says. Tell me how to fight the war.

Fire

So she was burnt, with all her clothes,

And arms, and hands, and eyes, and nose;

Till she had nothing more to lose

Except her little scarlet shoes;

And nothing else but these was found

Among her ashes on the ground.*

Sleep

What existed before home. The Ur-Home. The thing we all come back to in the end. Home to all, monsters and mermaids and children and parents, mortals and immortals, questions and dreams. The bright hall for heroes and the long dark depths for the rest of us.

The thing we build with our useless, heavy hands and hope will enfold us when we are going. When we are gone.

Darkness

As in: afraid of the. As in: a candle in the. As in: the endless sleep of.

*Excerpt from "The Dreaded Story of the Matches," in Der Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffman

XI. The return is the most difficult part; the thin membrane that separates the world from the quest is harder than diamond. The hero pushes, he leans, he tries to reorder his atoms in the shape of a shepherd, a monk, a maiden. He slips through the world barrier sideways, but his sword catches on the air and shatters the calm into pieces. The townspeople whisper and bring him t-shirts and photos to sign; the hero smokes a cigarette and tries to look casual. His heart is already aching for the high grasslands, the mysterious marshes, the dark forests with demons to catch and trails to follow. His heart is already beating faster in the slowness of the world.

X. The wound in his side smells rotten, stinks like death. He lies on his back like Prometheus, chained by pain and exhaustion. He watches the hawks circle overhead and thinks of his love, of the gold in her voice and hair, her hot pink toenails pushing into his calf while he tries to shake her awake from her nightmare. Her breasts soft round peaches in satchels. He groans and tries to rise, but stars rush to his eyes and he falls back. Dirt mixes with blood and pus. Hot winds blow through him, and he gropes for his cell phone. He needs a rescue. It is the truth, in the end: all heroes need rescuing after the quest is through. All heroes fall into themselves like empty clothes when the aim stops burning, when the last light has left the lining of their throats and they begin to be ordinary again.

IX. They ride out of hell with their prize held high. Swords out, car windows down, they sweep inevitable as locusts through wild, through wind, through wet and ocean that would swallow a dead man. They fly faster than angels, as just is their cause. But they are followed by the stink of fear and the smell of death, and hurt spills from fresh wounds because they are only human, strange and soft a thing as that can be. Shields hard, they flee because they cannot fight. Swords high, they flee because they will die, but not yet. Not today.

VIII. And there, in the clearing filled with light, the ultimate boon. It glitters flat, scratched and faded, this odd plain object of their quest. So much blood has soaked the ground in the seeking for it. The gods have starved in hunger for it. Heroes have shed their lives for it; villains have paid whole souls for it, and all the while, no one wondering what will become of the world when it is found. No one wondering where the rain will fall, if all the tables are heavy with plenty and the soldiers as gentle as lambs.

VII. At the top of the tower, a mirror. A face glowering back in the dim light, heavy-browed and dark with shame. A prophecy of doom, of twin destroying twin, son murdering father. The fields are on fire outside. The burning crops smell like late fall back in the town, like the homecoming bonfires, like the children's stray voices, begging a penny for the Guy. Like closed eyes and deep breaths. Like the womb.

VI. Things that will tempt you to stray from the path: a woman, a battle, a bag of gold, a sword, a gun, a stack of jeans, a crown, a letter, a baseball, a pipe, a half-pipe, a fortune-teller's tell, a green monster, a monstrous ambition, a starring role, a huge breakfast, a bottle of wine, a bed and a fire and a very good book. The hammock your dad strung between the two big oak trees; the space that he made for you where his knees drew in, when you were so small you could press your whole face into one rope square and watch the ground swaying, swinging up to meet you again and again

V. It doesn't really matter who she is, whether wife, mother, sister, aunt, grandmother, stepmother, goddess, saint, fairy, queen, or angel. The point of her appearance is to give them respite, to vary the pace and to provide a dream for reference. Later, when they are tired as earth — when they are hungry as fire, when thoughts are murky and dark as the great ocean depths — the dream will give them succor. Later, the dream will give them strength. Back on their feet, sword in hand, they will worship but not understand the lady. They won't understand that she is stronger than warriors, for her strength is endless and boundless. They won't understand that she needs no weapons, only the vast reservoir of dream to draw upon, to bottle up and distribute to wandering heroes. They will brush this great gift from their boots like dust at the end of the day, and she will not mind. She is made for this fate, after all. She is the world's loveliest vending machine.