Literary

Outside

Celestial Deception by Caden Heiser-Cerrato

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I read in a novel once,

That when stars radiate, 

Their light takes so long 

To reach the earth

That some stars die

Before we know

They are truly gone.

We see their intense brightness 

In the blackness,

And we are drawn to it,

Ignorant of their quiet deaths

Shrouded by the temporary luminosity.

When I gaze at the sky, 

And I see these beautiful,

Shining,

Celestial bodies,

Part of me wants to find solace,

But I know that most 

Have already died,

Leaving me surrounded by light

But knowing I am in darkness.

Yesterday's Rain by Caden Heiser-Cerrato

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      Yesterday’s rain had left puddles in the backyard. The grass was already dying so the deluge didn’t mean much to it. The tree in the front yard was damp and dark with water. Occasionally leaves shook and let go of droplets. The dirt had turned to mud and the railing on the front porch was wet. It didn’t rain today.  

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      I found a newspaper on the sidewalk that had been soaked through. I tried to open up some of the pages, but I just ripped the paper. I ended up throwing it away in the recycling bin. There were no more newspapers. There was nothing to do, then. I sat on my front stoop and looked at the sky. It was cloudy, but I felt no raindrops. I watched the clouds move slowly across the sky until it was brighter. Some of the puddles started to dry up. 

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      I felt better after some of the puddles were gone. I went into the shed and brought out a lawn chair that I had been keeping from the rain. I set it in my front yard. The kids next door were outside because of the sun’s reappearance and they were laughing loudly. I was trying to read some Hemingway but they distracted me. You can never read Hemingway when kids are playing outside. They will interrupt you and you will lose the majesty of it. You’ll miss lines and you won’t know the true meaning of pages and chapters and books, and you’ll miss the whole point. Laughter makes you miss the whole point. 

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      After they went inside, everything was much clearer. I sat in my lawn chair and read The Sun Also Rises and I imagined I was in France. It very much liked the France I read about in those books.

      Everything just fit together. Nothing fits together outside of books.

Outside of books, everything happens so quickly. You start to age, and your friends forget you and your family moves away and there’s no use in pretending like everything’s fine because there are no fiestas and no bullfights. There are just rainy days and emptiness.

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      I grew tired and I fell asleep. My book fell off of my chest and onto the wet grass. Some of its pages were ruined. It’s shameful to watch books get damaged. Watching newspapers get drowned in rain was different. They are temporary. Books are forever. Wetting the Hemingway book made me sad. I no longer wished to read. 

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      I walked inside where the kitchen was cluttered with the remnants of past meals. Leftover tea bags hung dryly on the insides of dirty cups. It was all a mess. I figured I should clean it up. No one else would. No one else cleans up your messes when you live alone. It’s up to you to make sure the place doesn’t stink and bugs don’t start living in the crevices of your kitchen. No one can stop them but you. 

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      I cleaned the mess up sluggishly. I walked to my bedroom and sat down on my bed. I sat there for a while, just thinking. I opened up the safe next to me and I pulled out the revolver. You should always clean your revolver or at least look at it sometimes, to remember you are safe. It was loaded but I felt like I didn’t need to put the safety on. I cleaned it with some oils and tissues and put it back into the safe. If I were Hemingway, I would’ve shot myself in the head. That’s how he died, you know, suicide with a gun. 

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      I tried writing after that. I couldn’t think of anything and my brain felt jumbled, and my shoulders sagged. Aging causes your shoulders to sag. Maybe something else causes it. I don’t know, I’m no doctor. I just know that they didn’t use to sag. I used to be able to write much more easily. A lot more happened before. All I could think about was the rain and how great it would be to have sun all of the time. Maybe that’s why Hemingway moved to Key West. He wanted more sunlight. It made no difference in the end. Nothing makes any difference in the end.

Desert Rose by Jeremy Hannon

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“On your belly, you shall go,

And you shall eat dust

All the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

Between you and the woman,

And between your seed and her Seed;

He shall bruise your head,

And you shall bruise His heel.” Genesis 3:14-15

We rode day and night in the footsteps of giants. The desert stars gleamed like drops of blood in the wind-tattered sky. They fell and welled up from the cracked earth and all the time she whispered songs of Mexico and her father and everything she couldn't miss. On the second morning, we left for the flatland beyond the canyon. She tried to smile as we rode, tall and twisted like the saguaro. It was lovely and sad. She was lovely and sad.

The canyon began to narrow. Pebbles trickled from the cliffside and tickled our necks as we looked down so our eyes could forget the sun. I looked over to her and the steed between her legs. The bells I'd sewn on the bridle's breast collar no longer twinkled and neither did her eyes. They'd gathered rust and rot from all the places they'd been and the ones I wished they hadn't. The dry scraping of their brittle shells screamed in my ears and the canyon and the sky as we roamed through the dusky void. The canyon edges reached for each other like two hands afraid to touch. The day soon fled behind those ancient walls of dust, fire, water, and death and we set up camp among them.

We laid face down on the milky desert sky with blankets of Earth to warm us. I shifted and looked across the blaze to the face I knew I no longer knew. We hadn't spoken for hours but the fire made my tongue burn. All sensible inhibitions had gone with the day. I asked her if she believed in God.

"Yes."

"Do you think he has any scars?"

"No."

"He's an old man, isn't he? And ain't scars all an old man has in the whole world to remind him of when pain hurt and love mattered and the whole damn thing amounted to something? Memory sure doesn’t. Memory ain't but a dream and there ain't no pain in a dream. And God's seen a hell of a lot of pain dontcha think.”

She was silent for some time. Her eyes still lingered on the dancing fires. She breathed in as if she readied herself for some terrible pain. She kept the breath to herself and rolled on her other side. I didn’t ask what she was going to say because I wanted to know and couldn’t afford to care. 

“Do you know why we’re out here?”

“Why else would I come,” she whispered, still turned from me. 

I thought of what she said and why she hadn’t run off yet. We both knew where she was headed. Maybe she had resigned herself to it. Maybe not. It would only take another half day’s time to reach the border. I slept and didn’t dream while the carrion watched the fading glow of our fire. In the morning we rolled up the sleeping bags and put on our packs to a sparse desert symphony. There was the chuckling rollick of a stream, the laughing tune of a bird overhead, and the cackling chatter of a locust. All of nature burned and decayed in this valley of fire but still found the strength to laugh at me. I grimaced and slung my rifle on my back. 

We pushed on, trotting around the stream, and found our way out of the canyon. Somehow the open sky felt more constricting than the canyon’s grasp. It was too blue, too simple, too free. I gazed into the dusty vista ahead. The path to the border feigned repose; I knew malice slumbered in the saguaro’s shadow. I didn’t fear the beast that would bite and bruise my heels, for I would bruise its head. Nor the one that ate dust and dragged its belly along the shifting earth. It was the enmity between the woman and me that I feared. 

I looked at her face. Her lips, once deep and delicate and fragrant as the desert rose, withered in the sun. Her eyes had yellowed with the days of dust and light. I wondered how I looked, but her constant air of disdain made it difficult to tell. As my horse stayed on its course, I tried to remember when she’d exchanged resignation for it. I passed the hours of the day in my memory.

The path we rode rarely had guests. Even the wind was smart enough to stay well away from it. What treachery it lacked in terrain was found in its climate and denizens. The sun was never so near the earth but at least the heat kept the thieves at bay. My back had begun to sweat profusely and the rifle across it started to itch. I shifted it but felt little relief. I knew we would soon have to set up camp; our horses could take no more. Off to the West, I saw an archlike structure that stretched to the sky and seemed to reach it. We could reach it in an hour. 

The dying sun conjured shadows from the landscape. The arch’s dark doppelganger appeared even more imposing when we rode towards it. It drew a contorted smile on the sand; a joke at the expense of man’s vanity, at his evanescence. 

A flurry of frantic hoof steps and whinnies clattered in my twilight reverie. As I jolted up, I looked down and saw my horse’s front leg sunken in a rattlesnake’s nest. I dove from the saddle before I was trapped under the flailing beast. My whistles did nothing to draw it from the bedlam, nothing but wail among the stoic rock. My hands reached back and swung the rifle to my shoulder. The shot filled the empty night and the rattling quieted. A faint clanking surfaced above the rippling shot. I turned and saw her trot away for a moment, stop, and turn around. She sat still on her horse and said nothing, not even with her eyes.

No more snakes crawled from the den. My horse whimpered and whined and spewed hot breath on the burning sand. I touched my hand to its hoof, and it came away warm and bloody. Its ankle was bitten. 

“Kill it there,” she grunted, “Put the poor thing out of its misery.”

I shook my head. With the reins wrapped around my arm, I led the horse to its feet. We walked grunting and stumbling towards the fading light. The leg buckled and a cloud of dust spurted from the ground where it fell. 

“Just kill it,” she said with agitation on her breath, “Please.”

I kept walking. The steed fell again but got up with motion. The ankle had begun to swell and so did the tears in her voice.

“Why? Why are you doing this,” she cried through quivering lips. “Help him, please.”

I walked a few more yards. The horse fell for the third time but refused to get up. The sun was gone and the day was dead. My shot rang in the night and I walked back to the camp.

“I’ll just use yours on the way back,” I said as I buried myself in the sleeping bag. 

I dreamt my first dream in days. By the time I was awoken by a faint ringing, all that remained of it was the faint taste of apple on my lips. Shadows moved in the night, creeping just beyond the light of the fire. I at first feared bandits, but soon saw silver bells flash in the light. I jumped from the ground as she began to ride away. She dug the spurs into her horse’s side barely removing them before she kicked again. Sand spattered over the fire and a moment later she was out from beneath the arch. I quickly grabbed the rifle from next to the fire. I heard bells, louder than they had ever rung before. I cocked the rifle and put it to my shoulder. The thudding hooves aligned with the twinkling of the bells. I placed my eye to the sight. My finger twitched on the cold trigger. They rang clear and free and white as wedding bells. I couldn’t bear to make them stop. 

I fell to the ground and watched the cloud of dust settle behind her in the moonlight. Howls rang in the night like crazed laughter and began to drown the bells. She faded into the silver-laced black of the desert midnight. I heard them ring no more.