Death is for Life

 

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Chapter 1-I Am 3

All the colors go round and round, round and round all the colors go, the rainbow has fallen from the sky, I didn't know rainbows could fall from the sky but I know now and I swirl the rainbow round  and round with my littlest finger-rainbows are delicate you know, and hurt quite easily.

I do not want to be a rainbow-hurterer. Round and round the rainbow swirls in the black, sulky water, red, blue, green, and yellow, and my face in the water swirls, too, and the swirly rainbow makes me look pretty though I am not pretty.

My hand rests on the green slimy of the black rubber pot. I wonder if I can see what color my eyes are in the water if I look a bit closer?

The grass is wet and thin beneath my knees and the earth is cold and brown. I am Round-the-Barrel, that's where I am, Round-the-Barrel that dips like a saucer in the center. The shiny silver milkchurn squats beside the green slimy rubber pot, and on the other side sits a rusty milkchurn and all of them sit along the pale white crumbly foulhouse wall.

There is  a tree behind me with a tyre swing  I like very very much my cousin Sean made it a hundred years ago or maybe it was last week—

And all the colors all the colors merge into one and out again, pretty colors merging, unmerging, re-emerging—

all the colors of the rainbow all the colors , and then

black.

I can't see the sun anymore. Water in my mouth.

Spin-spin -spin -spin—

Floating. Head face down, floating. Fine golden hair floating like a halo around the floating head.

Footsteps, dull. Thu thu thu, thu thu. Footsteps walking, footsteps running, then 'O Jesus.'

Panic.

The trees shake, the wind trembles, the universe holds its breath—

It's Granda, his strong arms around me lift me up up up out of the dark, my body on the ground prostrate and his hands strong as rock up down up down pump my small heart—

his breath pumps breath back into my limp body ragdoll me and next thing I am coughing water spurts he is hugging me tight tight

I open my eyes, wetness is coming from my forest green eyes and

wetness leaking too from Granda's  eyes of forget-me-not blue, must wipe the leaking water away, must must, 'My Skye 'he says, 'My Skye,' over and over and over again

and we sit just us two in the saucer dip of Round-the-Barrel we sit until the trees stop shaking and the wind stops trembling and the universe unholds its breath once more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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