The remaining one

The remaining one took her time on the long climb upstairs. That which had waited this long could stand the unbroached solitude for these last moments.
She paused to feel a knurled carving in the bannister, feeling cautiously also among her thoughts, for some remarkable observation, or state of mind, that would mark this event with particular meaning. But no, her thoughts were smoothed out and calm-there was no special beacon or knell in the silence. Her thoughts ran in the matter-of-fact way that was characteristic of her.
There was no real significance in being the remaining one.

In flashes, however, she could recall other trips up these stairs: a boisterous squad of females--older women in flat shoes and heavy sweaters and the occasional bright scarf or brooch. Teenage girls bright-eyed with innuendo, shushing the loud prancing and shrieks of the littler ones who bounced up the stairs, oblivious to the event, playing at scaling mountains and pretending to be goats.

One by one, all took the climb upstairs, with fewer and fewer to make the trip more a party and less a stately promenade.

A quarter hour ago, she had left her mother in her chair at the table. Mother had not been upstairs in twelve years, due to a motor accident. From belowstairs she had listened to the shining girls who ascended, and then heard the more somber and reflective party that descended. Her presence had been missed, but never had her absence been so marked. She could only touch the remaining one's hand, and wish her good climbing.

She realised that her progress upstairs would create a certain strange syncopation for her mother, and this slow pause on the stairs would cause her mother to look up from her book, to stare up and listen for the next muffled footfall. She resumed a normal pace.

She had remained with her mother alone these last five years, not allowing doubt to interfere much with the daily drift of her tasks and visits. Doubt that there would ever be cause for her to make the climb and leave her mother's house.
The letter on the table had seemed alien and slick in the bright light, even though she had seen its close relatives many many times in her life, when snatched up with a cry by a sister, a cousin or a niece. Its arrival caused joy, or shrieks or many expostulations. The remaining one recieved hers in silence, with a strange feeling of trapped air under her breastbone.
A few days later she had taken from her closet a few seldom worn pieces of clothing, out-of-date, but of good quality. She put them on, and then went to the button box that contained jewelry and poked earrings through the tight pierced holes in her earlobes.
Her mother noted her altered appearance at dinner with a brief nod and a raise of eyebrow, signalling approbation. She tried to appear normal and to make conversation with her mother, to amuse with stories from her visits around town, but she found herself drifting from the point. She realised she had sectioned each of her foods into two portions and was joining and rejoining them in a distracted minuet of protein and vegetables.
Clearly it was time to be going.

The remaining ones thoughts of climbs past slowly ebbed and she focused her attention on the stairs before her, choosing her footing with care on the worn strip of burgundy carpet. It wouldn't do to slip and spoil the rite.
In the quiet she could hear the beginning of rain on the roof, and she hoped there would be no leaks in the room where she would do her work.

The door came before her unexpectedly, sooner than she'd thought it would, even though she'd climbed these stairs and passed this door a hundred times a week, counting to herself, to make a game of it before she lost count or became distracted. She realised she had forgotten to count on this climb. She wondered if that was good luck or bad.
Impatient suddenly, she grabbed the doorknob and twisted on its loosened mooring, finally hearing the click of the the old latch and giving a push. The room was neither so dusty or dark as imagination or neglect might suggest, but she switched on the light overhead, as the rain darkened the sky and the little room. The warm light threw shadows in weird relief, and there was no sound but the quickening clatter of the rain above the beams.
From the door she easily located the sole contents of the room. One box. Her mother told her the boxes used to be carved wood or laquered. This one was cardboard, printed only with a few lines, suggesting design hearkening back to older traditions. It didn't matter. Not for long now.
With a breath and a self-conscious cough, she brought out from her pocket the box of matches. A few steps and she reached the box, and stood over it, woolgathering over the lid for a moment. In the next moment, with a breath out, a hair tucked behind her ears, she knelt to her work.

for geo. herms

I.

throughout the terra
incognita
I see signs of your passing

you've been before me
learning the names on
the moon

you've been to the silent
and abandoned forts
that stand on our
perimeters
citadels
of lost time

smelling damp-held walls
searching for hidden gifts
they come to you

II.

the moon-dial drums with
pounding distant tides
spheres tilting gently
on axis

en pointe
rusting orbs found
and set in for a parksite
dance to time
a time that never quite
recedes

step into the field

the dance starts here

whirling with distance
gravity
and slow lightness

dada ax

tristan tzara's alarm-clock hand-ax
breaks the morning
catches dawn in the teeth
splits apart eyelids
like cordwood
kindling

hangover-handax
carefully-placed logsplitting
steel wedge
thudpunding
grain-cracks

pulley-alarmclock
toolbox-mainstay-
counterweight
rends the morning
shatters rest
forbodes breakfast