Divided

By Derek Jackson

Divided is a collection of short stories and poetry exploring the darkness of hurt, the pain of loneliness and the peace of being loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Jackson
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301475032

Derek Jackson

I was born and raised in Beckley, West Virginia. As the only boy among three girls, I would often hide in the woods; making pathways within the foothills of the Appalachian's. It was there where I learned of quietness and how it allowed my mind to work freely. I wanted to describe the world around me and that was how I focused my will to writing it down. Mostly I've written poetry but situations started to creep within my thoughts and soon I wanted to record them also.

Book preview

DIVIDED

by

Derek Jackson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Derek Jackson

Cover photo by David Boggs

Table of Contents

+Opening My Eyes+

+Tim+

+E43+

+Peasant Dreams+

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Opening My Eyes

Little Blind Girl

She touched a tiger yesterday.

Tigers are like... she

heard people say.

Tigers are like... she learned in

school.

But it was like a

magical spell when she stroked

the belly of the

sleeping wild beast.

1

It wasn’t anything in particular that woke me in the middle of the night. My dreams were in order. My surroundings were calm and unobtrusive, but my eyes were wide open. They took in the darkness, which kept the room nestled in a pool of quietness. The darkness was thick and my mind floated inside of it. I rested in blackness. I was soothed and lulled as if I lay in a womb.

Gently, my ears settled on the breathing by my side. It was Kay. My eyes and head traveled toward the sound but I could not see her. In the darkness too she lay asleep, unaware of me at the moment. She was flying somewhere and meeting unknown people that existed within her.

Slowly, I searched for the edge of the blanket to peel it back so that I could ease myself from the bed. My tongue was parched and I rose to get a drink of water.

I reached the sink thoughtlessly in the dark. Hungrily I drank then returned to our bed.

Smoothly I laid myself down and covered myself again.

The time on the clock beside the bed spoke out with large red numerals 4:01 a.m. Then as my eyelids started to close again, Kay muttered. Dream words spilled out of her mouth. A sentence was spoken but its syllables were not precise. I was dumb in their presence so I drifted to sleep.

2

There is a point when the mind grows weary of dreaming and like a buoy being held under water, it carries the dreamer back to the surface of consciousness; back to the light of the outside world to take part in reality's play. The mind allows the dreamer to escape from the wild inner creations to take in new images to process.

I was there. I was upon that surface floating. After dreaming strange dreams my night was finished, it was over. And my eyes opened to take in light, but I saw darkness.

It was strange to see again a friend who I thought was gone. A friend who soothed me earlier now pricked my curiosity.

'I cannot sleep anymore,' I thought. My body and mind could not go under those waters again for they were soaked; drenched with rest and did not want to be still anymore.

I rose to see the time and found the clock's light gone.

‘Where did the clock go?' I wondered. 'The power is off.' I told myself.

Forcefully, I lay back down. Silently, confusion grew inside.

Somehow I knew that it was morning but my eyes told me differently. I stared blankly into nothing.

Kay's breathing was silent now; I could tell she was still beside me though, by her warm weight in bed.

Then she spoke. This time her words weren't distant mumblings. And by the sound of her voice, I could tell that she had been freshened by sleep. Morning was in her words and it petrified me.

Is something wrong? she asked.

3

Blindness: A complete shutdown of the sense of sight; lacking vision.

What do those words mean? Not able to see.

What does that mean to a person that has never seen?

Those few people whose eyes were dead since birth, what understanding do they have of light; of color; of images?

What concepts do these words spark within their mind?

Who can describe these things to a sightless one? While guiding their hand, can they feel something an eye alone can touch?

Oh look isn't that beautiful...What color is he...I remember when I saw that...

I say, An eye that has never experienced sight is a beautiful ornament, but the eye which has drunk from the ocean of sight, that eye is cursed if it dies. For once it is dead; it will thirst painfully to see again.

And it is that dread and horror which rooted itself within the starting place of my heart. When the words, 'I am blind', grasped my notions it awakened the sleeping beast of insanity.

The cadence of my life was skewed into chaos.

Panic clutched me with such strength, my bones became liquid; I was dumb and naked.

Who thinks, 'I will lose my sight tomorrow’?

Who is prepared to have their sight flicked off like a light? So final, so quick; gone.

I have lost something somewhere!

In the middle of the night, in the middle of a dream, my eyes failed to work again.

4:01 a.m.

Teasingly, the clock's numerals posted itself sharply against my whirring and blurry thoughts.

4:01 a.m. was the time when I was comfortable in my darkness. It was the staple that hung my flesh against a period of time, in which I was unknowingly vulnerable.

4:01 a.m. was the last time I was unhindered to do anything my thoughts put me to. I was free to please myself within the bosom of the world, yet I slumbered.

Swiftly, when I was into the heights of my imagination, a part of me was murdered. My demise snared me while I was pacified by sleep.

4:01 a.m. is what I saw last.

It wasn't a tree. The sky had no last message for me. The moon, a distant thing said nothing. And Kay...

A fresh pain entered me. Who will she become now that my eyes cannot touch her and follow the soft rhythms she fluently drummed into my hungry void?

She; a chord of motion, facial expressions and sensitive body whisperings, what form shall her presence take now? Her smile, skin and eyes have been stolen by a strange dark and kept in my memory where it will surely fade and distort with time.

******

As I struggled to dress with composure, I ached to glance at Kay's face. Listening to her questions, I wondered if she stared at me.

Under her gripping arms, I felt sorry for her and I didn't know why. She drove me to the emergency room.

I wanted to see her. Was she crying? Did she shake with fear? My only contact with her now was words and they were few.

We sat in a hollow sounding room which was filled with hurting people as my fragile world continued crumbling into ash and cinder.

I sat hearing noises, distant and close, from people and things I did not see. I felt foolish looking around at them not able to notice or capable to observe their nature.

Later on, while a doctor with a Middle Eastern dialect stood in front of me explaining nerve endings, I was being thrown off cliffs within my mind.

As she tried to explain biologically what had happened to my eyes (coating my new reality with heavy and meaningless terms), I was realizing with bone crushing humility that if there was a bottom to be reached, I had reached it.

Oh my God...where are you?

4a

being separated

As a child, I was lost in a department store once.

The racks of clothing that I followed my aunt Leda through became a maze. After I took my eyes off of her for one moment, I lost my direction.

I ran around the soft fabrics, pushing them aside, turning my body in all directions trying to catch a glimpse of auntie's red skirt.

I yelled her name with no reply.

I yelled again in another location with no voice calling back to me.

Alone and vulnerable, I aimlessly wandered around the racks of polyester and denim until they gave way to an area of neatly stacked boxes and empty rows.

It was then I broke.

'Auntie Leda is gone forever.'

'Momma is gone forever.'

fading

Where are you going, one who my soul loves? Please do not withdraw your hand from me so quickly and finally.

You define beauty to me. Your lips I have watched and I have come to want them upon me. I want them to hold the folds of my flesh lightly between them.

The sunlight knows that it has touched none as fair as you. When its fingers softly reveal your image, I am moved to tears. I have been captured inside.

Each time I gaze upon you, I am caught.

Desire is awake in me and want fills my flesh, and I am led away even if I wish not to go.

And here you are, pulling away.

Dragging my world; heaven and space into a darkness unknown to me.

Here you are, leaving me to grope after you with chilling screams.

4b

adjusting to another state of being

I am 26 years old and the first day I learned how to swim was today.

Now when I say learned how to swim, I mean, I overcame my fear of water.

It was the first day that I said to the one I feared and respected most, Here is my fear of you. I give it to you. I hand my fear of thee to thee. And do you know what I have found; the fear was nothing but an illusion. It was unfounded. Because, in the instant I let go of my panic, the water held me. I slowed and controlled my emotions and actions.

I adjusted my solid and concrete world to its malleable and yielding form.

I held my breath; my life, within me and I swam. It was like an instinct took over, remembering the way to move.

My hands cut through the water and propelled me forward again and again.

Afterwards I stood amazed. I swam, I thought. I came against a primal fear and found that I shouldn't have feared it all along.

Water is the substance of life; a source and I no longer fear that it will swallow me under.

I can control it a little now. And maybe with some practice, I'll get a little more comfortable with the physics of liquid.

5

Are you kidding? I wanted to find his face and, pound it into a ball and throw it somewhere.

Kay giggled. It was a nice giggle. It was light and almost carefree. Like a ray of sun after a storm, that one sound warmed me inside.

I finished, Yeah, so yesterday was a good day. My fork slid across the plate in search of the remaining scrambled eggs. I lifted the fork to my mouth. Nothing. I tried again. So how was your day off yesterday?

Kay's cup came down softly upon the table as she swallowed her coffee. There was a thoughtful silence, then she spoke.

I went to my sister's house for most of the day. We talked a little while until she left for work. Then I hung out in the 'district' till I got tired.

The 'district' was our city's area of art galleries and coffee shops. It was Kay's home away from home. Most of our leisure time was spent in one of the galleries talking to the owner or drinking large amounts of coffee and people watching out of a window.

It's been a month or so since I've been there. The last time, I was so determined to go I practically begged her to take me out of the apartment. It turned out to be very liberating; a healing.

I saw Damon. He was waiting for Kipp at Insomnia. He says 'what's up.'

Damon owned a glass art gallery. He got me in touch with people who helped me get into job training classes for the blind. He's a good brother. What's he up to? I asked.

Same old, same old. He was describing a piece which was coming next month.