Winter, of the moving kind

The clouds rolled in, slowly from the east to winter in the mountains beyond Kizzle-Dobo. Their low, rambling path left traces of cloud in the rocks along the foothills, like cotton candy caught on the jagged rocks and pulled slowly away from the billow that dragged along. The heat of the day melted the wisps into streams of snow, and they rested in the low points between boulders and the cliff’s edge. The snow would be gone within the week, sublimating to join the winter air and the mountaintops above.

Shym jok bala

“The kid doesn’t like pants. I don’t blame him, but I also don’t want him jumping on my bed.” He wondered how he could gently translate this into Kyrgyz. It would be good language practice. He would also prevent the contamination of his bed sheets. “BAS!” His two year-old brother clutching to a pen and two of his fingers squeezed and let the full weight of his body pull him back and towards the playroom. He drew pictures of horses and donkeys and camels and mice and wolves and people – and they all looked the same, with a body, two eyes and some legs – which, he had to concede; they all did have in common. The pantsless boy drew them on a magna-doodle, laughing at each one before a quick swipe drained their print from the magic screen.

How I wonder where you are

He stepped out into the moonless night and saw the dusty yard before him, lit by a million stars. He had never in his twenty-eight years of looking up seen a sight like this. More stars than could be counted, more stars than could be grasped. And the stars twinkled – red, yellow, blue and brilliant white shining their colors on the earth below. Until tonight it had always just been a nursery rhyme, but tonight, ah! Tonight showed that the sky was here first and words would always be a vain and dim attempt to capture their dancing beauty.

It’s that sight, that face, the star in the eye that cannot be calculated, cannot be explained, cannot be reasoned. It’s the half moon shape of her eyes when broken in a smile that hurls expectation and stardust to the ground, striking, enwrapping in a wordless cloud of wonder, then dancing, dancing across the sky.

Sugar

His favorite was chocolate. But somehow, even this could be ruined. How, he wondered, could it possibly be – unless the chocolate was sawdust and the sawdust was glued together in a smooth and rich, brown fashion, fashioned by sawdust chocolate with coconut cream that stuck with the glue to your throat, sweetening the vocal chords, the sweet and syrupy sound from sweet and syrupy chords, humming, humming in the throat above two lungs, two sweet and chocolaty lungs, sweet air breathed through sweet teeth, over a sweet tongue that likes chocolate, likes chocolate but not the sawdust kind.

Belly-up tea pot

Above the oceanless sky, the oceanless sky, the oceanless sky and I, I could not be bothered to be grasped to be held to be stoked by the glow of warm embers, breathed upon, sparks shooting out from beneath, washing the ground before disappearing forever, forever, going out and “poof!” spitting a little smoke, a little puff of sootened air, settling upon the ground, upon the ground, upon the ground below.