The arrow

/ January 8, 2017

The arrowhead pauses, nudges against my ribs like the finger of a child, becomes aggressive, won’t stop. Pushes harder. Penetrates flesh, and, emboldened, pushes on. It penetrates bone and cartilage, punches through, drives inward. The arrowhead navigates organs, tissue, muscle. Sluices to the opposite rib cage before it stops again, nudges, breaks through. Pulls the shaft behind like a straw through soup, filling up.

I realize this is how I will die.

My assassin is so evil, I think. So very beautiful, her hair spilling over her face, but so evil.

The sky so blue as it rises.

The grass so soft, colliding.

I wonder if the old man across the way will miss me coming by.

Someone grabs the protruding arrowhead and pulls. The straw follows through my chest, lungs, ribs. Feathers tickle my insides, exiting, tearing vital things, slicing. The damage is done.

It seems a good idea to press my palm against my side, to stop the flow. Is there a flow? I don’t know, but it seems a good idea. Something wet drips down my wrist, warm and such a good idea.

I love Ms. Delia. I do. I never told her.

I love my daughter. I do. I told her many times.

I am full of love, but it’s leaking.

I will rest my face on the grass, maybe. Lie under the breeze.

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37 thoughts on “The arrow”

  6. Reminds me some of the piece you did where the chronology was reversed. Love that image of the straw and soup, and the use of the word sluice which I think you used twice, and I don’t blame you, for the sound it makes and the sloppy feel to it.

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    • I can honestly say if I could choose two words to describe something I’d written, I’d like it to be those two. I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that I sometimes think the best art comes from a place of pain, so ‘beautifully painful’ is high praise, in my book. Thank you, Nurse Kelly!

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      • Absolutely agree with you. Wish it didn’t have to be that way, because balancing skill and focus with writing in an emotional state isn’t easy!
        Glad you liked my comment as much as I enjoyed your piece. And please feel free to call me Kelly. Have a nice night! 🙂

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  10. This is so beautiful, it’s gobsmacking (that’s a good thing by the way). Slow, lovely imagery, exploring in minute detail every sense and emotion. Just glorious, Walt! 🙂

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  13. I couldn’t use the link to your ‘Palpatine’ post for some reason so I hope this registers. I’ve just read your Trump post out loud to my other half – what powerful words. You’re right about that ‘Grinch heart’ and I’ve only just truly realised it – what is it about this privileged white man that makes him want to lash out so much, makes him want to hurt others that are different? What happened to him when he was younger, how the hell was he raised, that means he sees so many people as ‘lesser’? Many people come from wealthy backgrounds and most aren’t as bitter and hateful as him.
    Strong, strong words. We can only hope his damage is limited by the other layers of your political system, Walt.

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    • Thanks, Lynn. I thought I took the post down, was intending to soften the last paragraph a bit. Now I’m confused, and surprised you were able to see it.

      Let’s hope the damage can be limited, but with Republicans controlling Congress, I don’t see them standing up to President Palpatine.

      There are videos available on YouTube, if you’re interested, of a young Trump who is much more soft-spoken, much more temperate and rational, and I do wonder what happened to that man. Was he a product of the time, which was a much more soft-spoken, temperate, and rational time, or has his Grinch heart simply grown two sizes too small over time? Or has he just lost his marbles?

      Or is he so brilliant and manipulative that he’s seen his chance to seize power, in true dictatorial fashion.

      What’s scarier than anything else is that we had so many procedural opportunities to shut him down over the last year and a half, and we let him slip through to … this.

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      • Weird about the post – I could read it in one part of the Reader but not when I visited your blog.
        Interesting, what you say about the You Tube videos of him – I wondered if his childhood had made him like that, but it seems not. Is it the showman in him? That need to be on The Apprentice, to be seen, a void that needs to be filled.
        Did anyone really take his candidacy seriously for a long time, that’s the problem? Over here, the MPs (and our then Prime Minister too) openly mocked him in the press and in interviews, ridiculed the possibility of such a man becoming so powerful. Watching them all eat their words when Trump was elected was quite entertaining. Perhaps he got so far because no one took him seriously initially.
        I don’t understand how so many women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds voted for him – if we’d had an MP who said similar things about women, I would never vote for them. But then, my fellow Brits voted for Brexit, so what do I know? 🙂 A great post, Walt, though a real feeling of sadness in it too

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      • Hmm, I wonder if you hadn’t refreshed your reader. It disappeared from mine. Anyhoo, I’ve since republished it without changing a word, because, like Al Pacino said in Glengarry Glen Ross, “I’m upset. I’m very upset.”

        I don’t know what’s happened to Trump. My guess is the seed of what he is now has always been there. It may be that the environment of that time held him back, whereas the environment of this time does not. Or maybe he’s just lost his mind over time.

        I did not take him seriously, nor did anyone I know, but I was constantly worried throughout the election that the media was not scrutinizing him enough (which is ironic, seeing as how his perception of the scrutiny he’s under is his biggest hot button). I remember riding my bike through a neighborhood one day during the primaries (before Trump won the Republican nomination) and seeing a red “Make America Great Again” hat on the dashboard of a car. I just stopped and stared, dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe that someone actually had that hat, and would display it. Another time I saw two yard signs (in the same yard), one pro-Trump and one anti-Clinton. The Clinton one said “Hillary for Prison, 2016” or something like that. I took a picture and tweeted it, as if to say, “Isn’t it nuts that someone would actually think this way?”

        We had at least three chances to stop him. First, the Republicans should never have even allowed him to run for the nomination. They should vet their candidates, but they stopped doing that in the late 60s, I think, (and so did the Dems, I believe). But as Trump has proved, any jackass can throw his name in, and that’s probably not the best idea, clearly. I had a lot of anger and frustration over that, trying to understand why they would not want to trot out their best and brightest as candidates, and I’m still angry and frustrated, but at least I understand why — they don’t care who their candidate is so long as they can win. They just want to be in power. If it takes a snake oil selling huckster, then so be it. Second, he could have been stopped at the convention. It would have been right and proper for the Republican convention to reject Trump, but the convention has become a rubber stamp of the primaries winner for the reason above. Third, the Electoral College could have stopped him, but the College, too is a rubber stamp now, and meaningless. The people, who perceive themselves as the deciders of the election even though they technically are not, would go ballistic if their vote was rejected, which clearly at times it should be, but that constitutional protection is ignored, and the College is just another meaningless rubber stamp.

        I didn’t vote for him and I don’t understand how anyone could vote for him. I get that they are angry, they want change, and they don’t want Hillary Clinton. But how that can possibly justify voting for someone who’s behaviors and words are so disgusting is unfathomable to me.

        They say there’s some kind of global commonality of thought, some sort of shared rejection of the status quo across the international community that is leading to things like the Brexit vote, and the Trump win. While I don’t wish our problems on others, part of me wants to believe that’s true, because that makes the challenges that Britain and the US and other countries face a shared problem, and less of a commentary on the state of things specific to us over here. If it is just us, then all hope for us is gone.

        This reply was way too long, sorry!

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