Purlieu

I wandered tired and alone to the purlieu of my mind. There I found a gnarled mass of fears which barred the way. Like Theseus, I had with me some string and the confidence that I would make it unscathed to the other side. I should have known better, for my string was merely a filament of pride and easily broken.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

I found her in the purlieu. He had laid her down in a bed of wild flowers, straightened her dress and crossed her hands on her chest. I say he, could be a she, even a they; I don't know. I don't think anyone will ever know. Whoever did it had put a lot of care into it. Almost some reverence. Her little face had turned gray, a pearly kind of gray, so similar to the silk of her pretty dress that she looked like these statues I had seen in the candlelit basements of their churches.

 I couldn't resist the morbid impulse to touch her cheek. It was cold, and slightly sticky. I didn't press hard; I was too scared to leave a mark. I wondered where her colours had gone. Did they dissolve into nothingness? Did the person who laid her there take them away? As I looked at the flowers around her, I thought they seemed to look a bit brighter than the ones further away. Maybe the red that once lit her cheeks, the gold that had once shone from her hair, had diffused into the ground.

 I thought about going to the village and telling them about the girl. But I couldn't move. I just stood there. Suddenly, I couldn't think anymore, only feel. All the emotions available to mankind had started pouring into me, mixing into an incontrollable force. What came out of my eyes didn't qualify as tears as the flow was so strong. I felt out of touch with my own body as it started laughing, shaking, breathing faster, unable to cope with the contradictory overspill.

I sat down in a half fall, rested on a trembling arm. I could see my blood pulsing in the veins of my hands. I noticed I had drooled all over my shirt. As my thoughts were gathering themselves, it came to my mind that no one alive had ever made me feel like that. It was the sudden understanding of my own death that I had just faced. 

I stood up and brushed the grass off my trousers, a vacant reflex. I couldn't go back to the village. I could only go forward.

Hélène L.