Diary 33
DUSK TILL DAWN
01. Dusk. A hospital room: sterile fluorescent lights on a bloody, beaming face; precise, deft, sure movements; a team in scrubs placing a newborn baby in it’s mothers arms.
The mother holds the bloody baby against her chest, cradling it’s head in the crook of her arm, subconsciously aware that this moment is fleeting. The baby is looking up at her, sweet and calm, while the world continues to move. The Earth rotates on its axis, the fluorescent lights flicker, the newborn blinks. Everything and nothing happening all at once.
02. Night. A pine forest: persistent, sweeping wind between the trees; skeletal, fractured, falling leaves; a cabin illuminated by headlights. The headlights are coming from a pickup truck leaving the house, which is being driven by a silver-haired woman, taking a wide turn towards a narrow dirt road. The woman is driving slow and deliberate towards the main road and the little town off of it. Lightning bugs can be seen around her, swaying branches, the red moon overhead. The silver-haired woman looks in her rearview mirror as she proceeds to the road, her foot lightly pressing the pedal, and notices some leaves dancing around in the bed of her truck.
03. Evening. A residential area: harsh, white construction lights on a sinkhole in the street; sunken, hollow, crumbling pavement; a German Shephard behind a chain-link fence. The German Shephard is emitting a deep growl, eyes fixed on the sinkhole, pacing behind the fence. Cicadas can also be heard, shovels hitting the ground, the hum of power lines. Though if you were to walk up to the chain-link fence and sit on the ground in front of it, you would only hear the low eldritch sound coming from the German Shephard’s mouth, eyes locked on the sinkhole in the street.
04. Daytime. A marketplace: vibrant, blooming bouquets in buckets on the ground; stifled bachata music playing from an iPhone speaker; a wall draped in woven rugs. Two women are standing in front of the rugs on the wall, bargaining in Spanish, making gestures to one rug in particular with their hands. It’s clear by their postures that one woman is speaking with certainty, while the other is being careful, hesitant. The careful woman is leaning backwards, with a hand on her hip, away from the woman speaking with certainty, and the certain woman is leaning forwards, holding her chin high, shoulders back. Then a third woman, in a black mask with a low ponytail, runs into the frame and grabs the very rug being negotiated from the wall. “I made it, and I want it back” we hear her yelling as she runs away, her voice dissolving into the buzzing marketplace.
05. Dawn. An apartment complex: a room reduced to rubble; flickering amber light through tattered drapes; two holes in the roof and four surviving walls; a body folded under a table.
The body is a mother wearing a hijab, who’s only visible if you crouch down. The mother is sitting on her knees, leaning forward, chest-sealed over a baby in her arms. Sirens can be heard, wailing through the walls, the weighted footsteps of firemen on the staircase. Yet the mother sits still, compact, gently whispering hopeful assurances into her arms.