Post by Kennedy on Mar 4, 2011 10:19:41 GMT -5
I remember the child, now grown older than I, who had fallen in with the ape enclosure. Unconscious after his 10 foot dive. She, the beast-mother, gathered him up, broken and weary, stroking his hair.
A mix of terror and tenderness struck the onlooking crowd. The reporter beyond the camera said the ape lost a child earlier that year. They had been waiting weeks for her breasts to dry. She held his neck softly with massive black hands, both stronger than any man, but so tender so as not to harm the boy.
Panic set in, the men rushing to get their ladders and guns. She sits queen-like on the half-cut tree symbolizing nature, strangely stoic yet caring. In this odd place, still with this odd creature, her arms protecting it as if he was her own. I could not fathom her pain, from the losses she had known, first her freedom, then her child. Having someone rushing in, and trying to grab hold of what is most sacred, it all just seemed unfair. A lesser person would have fought them off. With her strength she easily could have torn them limb from limb.
I hardly noticed the fall, so meek and helpless. Words like small birds, not yet knowing to fly, and yet they could have flown, gracefully, beautifully; But then, just then, it all plummeted.
She laughed, and it happened.
“I love you” I said, softly, so soft that I half hoped she did not hear. All I heard was a long deafening silence. I felt shell shocked when she spoke again, the ringing had not stooped and her voice bounced and echoed in my head.
“Oh... well... I... really like you, thanks, um... have a safe trip back tonight it, it, looks like a monsoon out there” She said.
I could feel the ice fall down my heart and hit my stomach, a blow worse than a ten-foot fall. I felt so incomprehensibly foolish, so helpless, so much like the unconscious child I had been running in fear of. Yet as the ladders lower and someone comes into her world she shows her beauty. Pressing the boy up offering him his redemption, his rescue.
“Good night,” she said, as I opened the door on her apartment. I took my first step in to the downpour, it seemed all too fitting. She said faintly, so faint it that she half hoped that I did not hear, “You forgot something.” I walked back in, asked what it was. Noticeably shy she raised her eyes from my shoes to my face, and replied with no words, only a kiss, soft, and lasting. The people applaud, as he is carried out, still dazed, confussed, suffering a broken arm, but all and all alive, maybe even more so than before.
A mix of terror and tenderness struck the onlooking crowd. The reporter beyond the camera said the ape lost a child earlier that year. They had been waiting weeks for her breasts to dry. She held his neck softly with massive black hands, both stronger than any man, but so tender so as not to harm the boy.
Panic set in, the men rushing to get their ladders and guns. She sits queen-like on the half-cut tree symbolizing nature, strangely stoic yet caring. In this odd place, still with this odd creature, her arms protecting it as if he was her own. I could not fathom her pain, from the losses she had known, first her freedom, then her child. Having someone rushing in, and trying to grab hold of what is most sacred, it all just seemed unfair. A lesser person would have fought them off. With her strength she easily could have torn them limb from limb.
I hardly noticed the fall, so meek and helpless. Words like small birds, not yet knowing to fly, and yet they could have flown, gracefully, beautifully; But then, just then, it all plummeted.
She laughed, and it happened.
“I love you” I said, softly, so soft that I half hoped she did not hear. All I heard was a long deafening silence. I felt shell shocked when she spoke again, the ringing had not stooped and her voice bounced and echoed in my head.
“Oh... well... I... really like you, thanks, um... have a safe trip back tonight it, it, looks like a monsoon out there” She said.
I could feel the ice fall down my heart and hit my stomach, a blow worse than a ten-foot fall. I felt so incomprehensibly foolish, so helpless, so much like the unconscious child I had been running in fear of. Yet as the ladders lower and someone comes into her world she shows her beauty. Pressing the boy up offering him his redemption, his rescue.
“Good night,” she said, as I opened the door on her apartment. I took my first step in to the downpour, it seemed all too fitting. She said faintly, so faint it that she half hoped that I did not hear, “You forgot something.” I walked back in, asked what it was. Noticeably shy she raised her eyes from my shoes to my face, and replied with no words, only a kiss, soft, and lasting. The people applaud, as he is carried out, still dazed, confussed, suffering a broken arm, but all and all alive, maybe even more so than before.