A heart of storm

The sound of a rapid buzz of bug wings left his ear and dissipated in the distance. Its chaotic flight moved in a drunken wave from petal to petal until its body disappeared among the many other bees that feasted on the nectar of the garden roses.
 
She kissed his forehead with a quick movement of her lips. Up there, the arms of the tree barely moved and its leaves reacted with lazy yawns to the morning breeze. It was a fine day of summer. The sky was clear and the burning eye of the sun poured its cold heat over them.
 
“Karol” he whispered to her ear, and she looked back at him with watery eyes and an open mouth. The kiss was soft, like an engulfing embrace of warm water after a winter day. What did he feel inside his chest? There was a song, a distant song that grew progressively louder and louder and with it the shout of a pulsating, throbbing rage that permeated through his body, slowly taking over the undulating movements of his tongue, fogging his brain and escaping with the hunger of his kiss.
 
The minarets’ reflection wavered on the still water of the lake and the light breeze of a chilly London day carried on its wings the clicking sounds of their play. There was something irremediably elusive of a kiss, and an embrace, and the feeling of that thirst burning with such rage, so far, so many miles away.
 
“Away”. He murmured. “Away” he sighed. Why can’t we fly away, to an undying sea of nothingness and calm. Why can’t we fly and forget, and live, and not live, and be and not be, and sing and be quiet, feeling our feet burn in the sand, and float in the salt, cold and warm, warm and sweet.
 
There was a burst that night, and little Karol woke up, feeling the pulsating sting of a lightning jolt crawling through her spine. As the bombs fell and the sky raged, and the stink of fear and smoke filled the city’s streets, the night dissolved and the murmur of her tears, fatigued, and broken sank her into a fragile sleep. It was a train, or a bus, or a car, or the trunk of a van, which pierced through the back of the forest on her way north.
 
Her eyes were closed, and her lips shut. Sleepy, sleepy twigs of hair fell on her forehead in the depth of a peaceful sleep. He bent to murmur sweet syllables of air and stroke the threads of her dyed hair.
 
“You fell asleep.”
 
That morning the hums of the monitor filled the room. There was a shot, and another, and then silence reigned as a pair of men covered in black masks walked up the stairs. Marco stood there, watching up in awe to the frame of light until the sight of a flag, and a multitude of black took over the roof and the view from the helicopter drifted away, and away, to the mountains, and the news studio, and the concerned face of a reporter that burst in a diatribe of unintelligible words and explanations. The camera blinked and there was a shout again, and a shot, and the TV showed the dismembered bodies of men, young men drying under the sun, with their old fusils laying bare in their tombs of bone and flesh. He blinked again and he was there, in front of the water and under the minarets.
 
“I didn’t know how to speak in German until I was ten” and she laughed. “I went to school and didn’t know anything. I don’t know what they thought. They probably thought many things” and she laughed again as he threw the folded arch of a leaf of grass into the water. It sprang back into its original shape and turned and turned like a broken clock.
 
“I liked the cuckoo clock we had in my house. The little bird would go out and chirp every hour and every quarter hour. When the hour hit, it would chirp a few times, depending on the time. It would only go out once every quarter hour. You had to turn it off at night unless you wanted to listen it singing and singing when everything went still. It is so silent up there you can hear the earth breath. It is a storm of quietness, so thick that it is made of glass.”

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