LEMONS & SALT

January 23, 2008
revised November 24, 2009
© Fred Dumpling. Redistribution is prohibited.

He sits on the beach,

the white sand stretching beneath him

like the palm of a great hand.

This is his kingdom.

He flips the pages of his book,

skimming over words he's memorized a thousand times,

telling of a mountain where he used to laugh and dance

when his hair was longer and more beautiful.

This is his prison.



On the mountaintop now sit two brothers,

tied not by a womb but by each other's love.

One is death's boy; the river of his hair is ink,

and the whisper of his skin is the ash

of the bodies he anoints.

The other is blue blooded, noble,

nobler today than with the last sunrise, for today

he is a man.

Black and blue, like a bruise on the snow,

like the bruise on a man's heart

when he knows what he has taken.



She is betrothed.

Death's boy stands with her under his favorite lemon tree.

She does not know to whom, but the boy is restless.

She will know soon, she assures him, and she will explain

that she and he are one,

have always been one,

will always be one,

no matter what the day may bring.

Death kisses her with a hushed exhale;

his life is on that breath,

and she breathes it

in and out

wrapped in the shade of the lemon tree.



But the day brings blue.

Black is relieved as the sun rises

but is crushed as the sun rests higher in the sky.

Brotherhood means little to one so ascended,

haloed, winged, elevated as an angel or

a god.

No — the nobler has always wanted her,

has always desired, like a mortal.

He'll be selfish just this once.

The shadows of the lemon tree shake their leafy heads,

and black runs.



Where he runs to, he does not know,

but gravity, fate, or luck, good or bad,

carries him down the side of the mountain.

Down, down, running,

its body crumbling under the coarseness of his feet,

toughened from years of toil,

carrying bodies through darkening days.

He is death's boy, only death's boy,

and he tumbles—

They meet with a collision on the beach.



The boy meets the prisoner-king with the sand on his skin and the salt in his hair.

Apologies are awkward. Introductions carry

a strange wistfulness.

The stranger knows that death comes from the mountain.

He, himself, is too rough, too unrefined, too harsh a shade of red.

He lived on the mountain once.

They were both something once.

They were both loved and both betrayed.

Exile, the stranger explains. But

he has made his prison of sand and sea his own,

and death is welcome to stay.



It's a humble existence for any man from the mountain,

where all is ivory, marble, and gold,

where men live on nectar and feast on ambrosia,

and sleep in their trappings of order and wealth,

but in the sandy kingdom lies a treasure

no man from the mountain has ever known.

He shares that treasure with the newcomer,

teaches him to feel, to acknowledge, to experience

freedom.

The exile's words carry all the brilliance of a sunrise.



There are very few reasons a man may be exiled,

few crimes too small for a man

to land in the ashen boy's care,

too heinous to remain

in that heaven of ivory, marble, and gold.

Death's boy knows how the prisoner-king won his throne,

knows from the particular light of his eyes,

the words spoken between words,

the lingering fingertips, the cant of his head,

the sun emerging from his lips.

Death eats it. Once, twice, more.

The sun will rise within him for many days.



They know each other more than anyone has known them,

and by the last morning, they have felt each other, as well.

Death has tasted the salt in the light's red hair,

kissed the sand on the light's sun-blemished skin.

The light, in turn, has touched the silk of death's nakedness

and breathed the cold dusk from death's lips.

They lie under the gray of morning

in light's kingdom and his prison.



Wrong. All wrong.

Death flees the exile's sleeping embrace

to where the tide swells

in and out

under a still-visible moon.

Sand and salt and sea turn to dust in death's mouth,

and he washes it out on the beach,

only to receive more of its flavor.

Panicked, he turns toward that heaven,

leaving light to remember his betrayal.



He does the right thing. He makes confession,

and punishment comes swiftly

and painfully,

raging like a salted wound in his cheek where his father struck him.

He has committed a great dishonor.

Yet, his honor can still be salvaged.

Mighty as Zeus, death's father takes lightning in hand and strides

powerfully.

Death is his weak boy, his misguided boy, his poor, inferior boy,

and his mistakes must be rectified.

For the second time that morning,

death realizes what he has done.



He's run this path before,

down, down, down into hell,

this time with the knowledge of where he's going.

He does not tumble or misstep (past the blue),

but the angels,

the ascended hold him back with their wings spread

protectively.

He fights,

weak boy, misguided boy, poor, inferior boy,

but all he can do is watch

as thunder claps in the cloudless sky.



Down on the white sand of the beach,

light's blood is spilled in a wide, bright splatter,

like a mockery of Valentine's Day.



Death screams,

and he screams as the mighty Zeus looks his way.

Father! Father! But the light does not fight,

one trembling arm keeping his body from the sand

as the other keeps his organs inside.
His eyes flick briefly toward that boy,

who sees his exodus in those suns.


Father! The angels tighten their grips. He is trapped,

watching the scene on the white, white—

Thunder claps again,

and the light is snuffed out.

The world remains bright and lit to all but death,

who is suddenly blind and lame

and crumbles.



The angels return to their heaven as death makes his way to the shore.

His lover lies face down in the sand.

Death turns him over. His face is sandy, sandy. His blood is sandy, sandy.

Blue, blue follows apologetically. He tries to speak

but is immediately silenced with a barbed word from death.

Death carries his lover to heaven,

and the blue trails mutely

until they reach death's workplace, and blue is told to leave.

He does so without audible complaint.



The ashen-skinned man washes his lover, gently,

of the salt in his hair and the sand in his skin

until he is a corpse, clean and cold as dusk,

and gray with the light of morning.

He has prepared many in this way,

but only his lover is baptized with tears

before the oil for the burning.



The fire burns with the scent of lemons and salt.



Death follows months later,
his eyes turned toward that bleak horizon.

Blue attends the burning, as does she,

but neither together.

She opts to weep alone because

she and black were one,

had always been and would always be,

no matter what the day had brought.

She and blue separate before a moon has passed.



The mighty Zeus struggles to keep the clouds in the sky in the absence of his sun.

Blue struggles to spread his wings, as heavy as his heart's burden.

She alone kisses the bark of the lemon tree and wraps her arms about its girth.

The beach is vacant. Its sands are pink,

and they burn with the scent of lemons and salt.