Death and Politics

She pivots and power walks to the six-door stage, escaping the small mindedness that seems to infect the insular inhabitants of small towns like a virus over an open wound. “Alex” His voice floats after her, slowing her progression. “Alexandra.” The inflection holds a magnetic field pulling her back to a childhood where his voice moves her like hands on an Ouija board. She slows, glances back, then turns to watch his approach. For the first time, she realizes his shipwrecked frame. The mast of his shoulders that had once carried her over swells and through desperate storms that blew in from nowhere was now battered and worn. The solid hull which she had gripped frantically when a startling wave large enough to lift her up off her feet and carry her spindly frame out into the tangled arms of the deep came sweeping past the breakers of Taylor Beach, was weathered and frayed. And the jaunty lightness with which he had sailed into the house that had broken the intensity of the two women tug-o-warring over homework or curfew or any of the multitudes of flags worth fighting over when parent and child were in the throes of adjusting boundaries and shifting shores, seemed to have floundered into the depths from whence they came. His dancer’s gait has abandoned him and he steps heavily over a cement slab tattooed with a name as indecipherable as Rongorongo. He stumbles over a specter’s tripwire as he reaches the young woman’s anxious scrutiny.

This is an excerpt from my fictional piece 'Death and Politics at the end of the world' you can read more when you click on the 'Death and politics' tab on my labels of entries on the lower right hand side. )

photo "Old Key West" taken from: http://www.artgally.com/suehess/susanehess-gallery3.htm Her work is visually stunning and inspires me as I continue working on this piece.