The Death Knell

Whispering winter. She soothes like a violin placed slightly too high, bleeding by Picasso into a woman's waistline. And the king calls for another Adagio.


On the LIRR I travel across the plains of my home and Russian snow is laced with sugar and smells and tastes like the tears which drop from the soul of this violin. Dissolved with the rapidity of cotton into my removed consciousness and slight discomfort.

Someone was killed at Columbia on Friday night and all I can see is him pressing back her head, holding it in his hands, the soft pulse on her neck and then sudden beat and blinding waves of color and the smell of blood reminds me of stew and of chewing the insides of my lips and tearing at my tightened gums. I smell it. And suddenly it is on my hands; drying under my nails, staining the snow from black crimson to fuchsia.


And my hand goes to my neck and it is I who bleeds and it seems like red paint stroked against the pasty, clammy white of my throat. My cheeks drain and I imagine Mimi sputtering up her soul in her bed and suddenly, the vision is gone and I am on the train through my sweet, blissful snow.


And I resist the urge to admit that some dark part of me longs for the drama to resume, for the vision to return. Part of me longs to see everything in red and white-- longs to see the clouds tear and bleed before me-- to see God himself wave a ghostly arm to wash away his own oozing red tears-- to see heaven weep, lying in the lap of a valiant tenor who, frantic and disbelieving, denies her death as she passes into sleep, softly trilling her end.


I want to see him rise with the murdered heavens in his arms and lament the curse of his life, of his love, of his tragic flaw. I want to see him crash to his knees and to wipe away my own soft tears in a wave of applause and orgasmic completion as the curtain wraps herself around the world and I rise into the void of end.


But we are approaching Penn Station now and fantasy must hold her breath for a while longer.