Heavenly Song

Slowly, quietly, tenderly, gently

Calling me back from my zone

I lay there covered in a blanket of darkness

Not knowing where my head roams.

Then faster, louder, panic-stricken now

My darling, awaken, please, dear?

I'm lost in this slumber, this heavenly song

Leave me alone, I want to stay here.

Selfish, alone, I'm wondering why

Why am I all alone in this place?

There's light shining down, from all around

I look up and see a beautiful face.

It shines like the sun, no, brighter, I think.

And rainbows of love fall on me.

Go, says a Voice, you've had a glimpse.

One day, you will return to Me.

Then hunger, and hatred, and loss, and pain

They flood over me as I fall.

Falling down in a deep, dark well

Where I can't see His light at all.

Slowly, quietly, tenderly, gently

Calling me back from this darkness inside

I need you, he cries, and I need him too,

So slowly, I open my eyes.

Deborah Faith Taylor

~2008~

The Other Side

It was early morning when the ship took off. It was foggy. I remember the smell of the salty water all around me; the waves tossing up seaweed on either side of the watercraft. It was cold and damp: I remember all this. But I can’t remember this girl’s name. She tells me she’s my daughter: unlikely. She stands beside a woman who looks vaguely familiar, and tells me she’s my wife: possibly. I look around me; at the white-washed walls; the black and white checkered floor; the octagonal mosaic holes poked into the ceiling. This is not my life. I close my eyes… and remember.

* * *

It’s 1947. The ship glides through the fog like a porpoise in the water. I pull my hat- a navy blue cap- tighter over my golden curls. My blue eyes survey the muggy horizon before me. The fog means that we are closer to land: another twenty-five miles at least. Lt. Evan Song taps my shoulder. “Come inside.” He says. I pull my eyes from the grey waves to look at my lifelong friend: the friend that helped to build a tree house out of old boards when we were eight; the friend that played football with me in high school when we were 16: the friend that enrolled in the war right alongside me, “to take care of” me, he told my mother. We were like brothers or twins, almost. We did everything together. “Grub’s done.”

I follow him into a smoky interior filled with laughter and jovial talking. We aren’t men; only boys who don’t know what we have gotten ourselves into yet. I sit down and smoke a long cigar with my colleagues. I cough: I’ve never been used to the taste the tobacco left in my mouth. I smile and cough some more, and my friends all laugh. “Have a beer!” they say. I raise the bottle to my lips as they all toast me. But I never drink it before a sound like a firecracker, but deeper, issues from the curling fog.

* * *

There are some things that are hard to remember, just because you can’t, but there are others that are easy to remember, because you don’t want to. Like the smell of splintered bodies lying all around you; the moaning, silent screams of the boys who said they would keep your secrets; the death of your brother. These things are the easiest to remember, but they are also the hardest. My best friend had always said he would be there when I died. He never thought he’d die first. Neither did I. These memories I pull from my previous life are not ones I love to look back on, but ones that I know; the ones that pull me into something real; something behind the real world where I close my eyes and lie in a hospital bed; something on the other side.