Tiresias and me

There was someone in front of me. A smiling face. I half smiled back then reached into them with second vision and saw beyond the smiling face a sad and impoverished beauty. I told them.. please, be who you are and that smiling face went ghost and the sad beauty was there before me, asking help me, please. 

I matched the affect with some lustre, and they saw themselves and beauty. They were perplexed. Listen, sad beauty, the beauty goes with sad. You can show it. I know it. They did not trust me yet, but I put faith in them. They split into three and put their hands upon me. They carried me to swift currents and lay me in there. I was scared, it was cold, but the frothy foam protected me like a nest of spittle bug holding me safe.

The waters took me away, and the three of them waved goodbye in sepia monochrome. The sky was dark and wild. Someone's laundry I passed billowing on the line. Then some dirty formerly white sheep trailing a black sheep to the grazing grounds. All of the sounds on the land were drowned by the rushing waters. There was a poor family in an eddy, playing in the muck. They saw me passing by and wished me luck.

I passed my former self and family, thinking on the banks. My satchel of books made of canvas. My shoes made of canvas. My overalls made of canvas. My hat made of canvas. My family, made of canvas. The birds, made of canvas. The sky.

The sky, made of denim. I tumbled over and over and over. I could not arrest the motion. A wise old man as blind as a mole, caught me in my tumble. I thought he was surprised but he was calm. A toothy grin spread across his face. Tiresias! He shushed me right away, put his long and bony finger to my lips and came close then cast his gaze back upon the sun now blasting from the haze.

The waters here were murky still. I could hear the sounds upon the lands. Tiresias and I, we listened to the song birds singing. We could neither see them. All we needed was the song. Tiresias he held my hands in his, lovingly, while still stretching back toward the sun yet leaning toward me, in robes so old they must have come from ancient Greece. His white hair wild upon his head! The night air was whistling in on shadowed hills of black licorice.

The grateful way the loving way he shook and held my hands! I cannot express the feeling given over, simply by the nurturing of fingers laced with mine. Then cupping both his hands around mine, when the whipporwhill she sang!

While we were there, holding hands, blinded by her soporific sound, two serpents slithered up out of the reedy marsh beside us. Suddenly Tiresias gripped my hands with alarming strength, and then I felt my body quiver and my whole entire being shake.. I had no time to cry out, as my being was sucked into his palm and gone was I, or anti-gone.

One snake struck out at my lifeless form, and my dead leg began to bleed black blood. I was safely gone by then. Or anti-gone, anon.

Tiresias finally turned his head back from the sun, enlightened robes falling all around us. He struck out at the serpents quick! with a stick! and next I knew he was gone or anti-gone. A woman made by Hera stood lightly in his place. The river had subsided into the porous earth and left her ballet toes perched up upon the sand. I know not where I was. But I was safe, wherever that may be. Gone but antigone.

She cupped her hands around my bleeding lifeless leg, and gathered up the black of blood, and sweetly scooped it to her mouth. Black licorice indeed, with a chicory after taste. Everything would never be the same.