Her Voice

In the distance I can hear her soft voice singing. They are small little words on her short little red tongue.
"Tini-tini-tini-tini..."
Such a tiny little voice in a tiny little body. I can hear her singing somewhere in the distance. Maybe a few feet away, perhaps in the garden beyond the window, or maybe, even closer. With each note she shakes off a little more dirt, finding her way out of the coffin hidden in my scattered memory. The broken rusty nails have done their job, but now is another time, and the song awaits. The melody dances in the air, like a silk curtain catching a spring breeze. It comes out into the open air, wild and slightly chaotic in its form and carries me with it. I see it all.
I see El Salvador and my old small house. The house I left for the great open and cold expanse of the north. The people and buildings that are made of steel and scrubbed clean of their sweat-filled dirt. The people I left that lived in the sun, in the thick air that threatened to choke us all. We lived with the threat of fire, of revenge and anger. Even the ground birthed its demon and left it there, left it as a signal for all of us to remember. I looked out the window each morning at the volcano that shadowed us, always waiting, lurking so close, speaking only with a silent threat.
And I hear her voice. It has never faded. I hear my name and the voices of my sisters and mom slightly further away. Are they still nailed in there? Are they out there or in here? The darkness shows me nothing. I look and look. The garden is empty, the rooms are deserted. They must be in here. Buried deeper beneath a thousand memories and desires. How did they get there and how do they call to me now? They call my name in unison, like a chant. I take a deep breath and lunge forward. The corridors are dark, almost black, but the air is hot and so sticky. I drip with effort as my bare feet carry me further in.
Then everything explodes. The black turns into a million crystals and I watch them tumble towards me…all those little moments of light. It happens so fast, but I watch it stretch through lifetimes. Her voice calls to me and I watch the little beads fall. There is no end. No ground. No place to ever fall to. So I watch them move, up or down no longer matters. The categorization is as useless as the thought. They just go, and I watch the little beads of light trail away like shooting stars.
I hear her voice and see her little tongue once again. Her little body. The broken nails. The melody that drifts over me like a soft river. I look into the darkness and see an explosion once again, we tumble together, sounds, flesh, and memories, all dying together once again.

Nightime Encounter

Russian satellites are overhead. I can feel their steel, the harsh metal bits that move like a creeping demon in the night sky, the dark time when owls roam, when dreams take form, when men run. Every twinkling star is long gone, shadowed by machinery and blinking lights that disguise themselves with distance. But I can feel the heat from their engines, here, alone on my bed, beneath a thick, checkered pink and black afghan blanket, wisps of hair dance in the waves of engine gas. White heat burns a hole, a tunnel of yellow and black burrows through my third eye, right through a thin layer of cranium and into my forebrain...the beginning, where superficial thoughts are born, where petty demands are made and whispers of tears are born.
Large weapons spiral in the skies above, helicopters as big as cities hover and wait. their blinking lights flash as I look through the thin paned window.
On the ground, on the soft earth that still has a few sparse-leafed trees giving the last of their apples, there are the Russian troops, thick men with wide, white faces. They will give no smile. Nothing can crack the resolve etched across the lines of their thin, red lips.
Sttttccrakkkk, a flash of lighting streaks across the street. There are sounds of popping, sounds of falling glass splintering. A dark figure moves in the night, beneath a heavy coat made of wool. He darts down the street, he moves to the right, his arms raise, he turns slightly to the right, dodging the large bullets that aim to rip apart tissue and soft muscle. Run! Move through the storm of silver rain!
He runs, a lone figure against the darker coming storm. He moves with the grace of god. An army at his back, he moves like a psychic through their messages of despise. I see him run, but at the same time, as though I can see everything on three separate screens, each possibility before my eyes at once, I see him in the center of a thousand stoic men, the smell of metabolizing beer mixed in with the cold night.
He pulls a gun from his coat, he has identified their leader. Amid a thousand men of the same size, the same emotionless faces, he has spotted the leader, his gun aimed squarely at a head of long brown hair. A female shows her face, smooth and white in the night, her pink lips open to a small smile, a hint of evil, a glimmer of utter submission. Her dark overcoat falls and she is naked, a beaming star among the shadows.
The troops flee at the sound of her command. They move like water down an unplugged drain. They disappear, along with their guns, and the two of them are now alone.