The Shiver

A battlefront nurse, never able to explore her love for women. Death comes before she gets to know Sappho. An ode to the Tenth Muse.

The cave was white hot. Nothing you would expect from a crevice high up in unnamed rocky mountains just shortly after the New Year; at least according to man, men outside of me, lost to their darkness, damp, impenetrable selves. A clone.

I think that is what she was trying to be– this cave I mean. I desperately want these words to be worth it, to explain this feeling, like a guttural howl sung in Gregorian chant, something that cannot reach your ears but your heart. A war.

I think that is the last thing she remembers, or was it how all the new men felt slick with blood on my twenty something year old skin. It would dry so deep, wash off all the blood in the sink and see it weeping down the drain. Never stopping. You can’t be in there forever, you have to go back out there to start another job before the water runs clear again. A cave.

Yes, of course, the cave. I woke up under a blanket of snow, which confused me. I thought I had died but too real this idea of one long-going-on stuck to me. Not dead, but alive. At least that is all I could assume from this point. A rebirth.

Mother, you opened up wide from slit to slit to bear me again, but why here? White. Hot. I am sweating. Mom, I should be freezing. The sweat evaporated up into the clouds to pour snow back down upon me, upon this frozen lake. Wait, did I say this was a cave? I lay back down where I was and close my eyes. My mind doesn’t feel like my own but many. I feel the marching of boots coming at me in all directions. Four sides flanking in, but I could not save them just like they could not save me. A silence.

Could you imagine what would happen if we allowed ourselves so much silence? The marching stopped, it’s like they are upon me. Wind. It’s so quiet in here, you noticed? I’m too hot, I stand up, and the snow I was buried in is shaken off again. A repetition.

I lay back down. The marching starts. I get back up. I shake off the snow. On the horizon, the sky and earth meet in a piercing white glow. Where the snowy earth and white clouds meet, it is almost indistinguishable, the reflections touching each other, holding each other. I tell myself to walk, but I lie back down. I think about the horizon and reach for the space where I’ve escaped into pleasure. There is nothing there to touch, just space, like a galaxy. It was wet and sticky, and I moved my hands in a familiar rhythm. Throbbing, tightening in my belly. A shiver.

Who this time am I to persuade to your love? The goddess asks from up above, but I am not Sappho. The war was easily where my heart lay flat, and so I stay refusing to call out. The army was made up of men. My tongue is not frozen, I shiver and am still sweating. I will not call out to you, goddess of my dreams. Death is not what I lack, and I regret everything. A discovery.

Auguste Charles Mengin (1853–1933)