Art: Color Field: Violet, Blue, Black, Red, Orange and Purple by John Timothy Robinson
A GRAVE MADE OF HOPES
In a bleached white field made of dead hopes, I dig my own grave.
My arms move with a mechanical methodicalness, the up-down movement of the shovel almost hypnotizing. It’s a ritual—the shovel falls, digs deep, lifts high, tosses hopes in a sweeping motion, falls again—one that quiets the doubts inside. There are others here, digging too, our shovels breaking ground the only sound in this field. We ignore each other. Our eyes are fixed down, watching with disinterest as our hopes are cast aside before our eyes.
The animals speak to me as I dig. Naivety, guised as a jittery squirrel, chitters anxiously, telling me to turn away. Pride, dazzling as a brilliant peacock, assures me there is more to come, that I should not be giving in. Ambition, ever the brazen bull, roars at me to fight. Only Experience is silent. Appearing as an owl, it watches from a distance, perched on its branch, its eyes at once both sad and understanding.
I keep digging.
Soon the grave is done. The shovel falls, one last time, discarded by my side. I pause for a moment, examining my handiwork. It’s weird; now that I’m not digging, the nagging doubts are louder. Surely there’s another way?
I take a deep, shuddering breath. I don’t have to answer, but I do anyway.
If there were, would I be here?
I step forward, lower myself into the grave. The dead hopes press up against me. I wasn’t sure what they would feel like; it turns out they feel like nothing.
I close my eyes.
Already I can feel the hopes crushing down on me, first as trickle, then as a flood. They’re rubbing against my skin, seeping through my clothes, crawling up my nostrils. They’re pressed tight against my tongue, forcing themselves down my throat. They’re jamming my eyes open, pressing themselves against my irises so they’re all I can see.
I bear it silently. Soon it will be over. Hope will be gone. Dreams will be gone.
Pain, I think as a single, foolish tear falls from my eye, will be gone.
I notice something then. My vision is blurred, faded from the dead hopes crawling against it, but I can still see that I am not alone. There is another here, too—a body, covered in its own dead hopes. I reach forward, brush the hopes from the face, strangely angry. Why is it here? This is my grave.
The hopes slip away. The face staring back at me is my own.
I stumble back, screaming silently through a mouth filled with death. I force the hopes from my eyes, look around me. I can see now that the grave is crammed, filled with corpses, piled one on top of the other. I know with some horrible intuition that they are all mine.
I shake my head wildly, desperately. No, no, no! It’s not supposed to be like this. How many times have I been here? Why didn’t it work? The hopes are supposed to stop, the dreams, the ambition, the pain—the endless, endless pain—it’s all supposed to stop! Why did I have to keep coming back?
There’s a noise. I look up, blinking back tears, struggling to see through the mounds of dead hopes. Experience is at the edge of my grave, looking down, still not speaking. He’s not alone—Pride is there, too, standing between Naivety and Ambition. I can see Faith, the brave, brave badger, looking down from eyes filled with tears, and Pain, glaring at me from a wolf’s face, eyes burning, demanding, telling me I can take it. And there, crawling forward from between their legs, is a tiny baby hummingbird, feeble and weak, stumbling as much as walking, yet somehow still moving.
I don’t know her name, and yet strangely, I do.
She’s Hope.
They reach down to me, all of them together.
I stare up at her, at that tiny, pathetic bird. How can she still be alive? After all this— I look around the grave, at all the dead hopes, at my own corpses beside me—how can she still be alive?
She gazes back at me, eyes wide, not saying a word.
How many times? I ask myself again. How many times did I try to end this?
How many times did I fail?
I let out a sigh.
Once more.
I stand.
About the author:
Eli Landes is a marketing copywriter by day and a fiction writer whenever he can squeeze in the time. He mainly writes Jewish fiction, but he’s been to known to dabble in the weird, the absurd, and the truly dark. He lives in New York where he’s working on his first novel. Follow him at his blog: RE: Writing – A little bit of different
Art: Color Field: Violet, Blue, Black, Red, Orange and Purple by John Timothy Robinson
In the artist’s words:
John Timothy Robinson is a traditional, mainstream citizen and holds a Regent’s Degree. He minored in Studio Art: Printmaking. John is also a ten-year educator for Mason County Schools in Mason County, WV. He is a published poet with seventy-six literary works appearing in fifty-nine journals and websites since August 2016 in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In Printmaking, his primary medium is Monotype and Monoprint process with interest in collagraph, lithography, etching and nature prints. John also has an interest in photography and collage art. Published work; “A Grotesque” appears in The Diagram Issue 16.6 2016. “Red Triumph with Daffodils” was published in The Tishman Review 2017. “Gold Fusion” first appeared in New England Review 2017. “Golden Bridge 1,” “The Cook,” “Crying Woman” (block image), “Religious Figure 1,” “Orchard Keeper,” “War Face,” “Candle,” “Iris” (after Ayres Magenta 1), “Pioneer Cabin” (photo) and “Old Car; Mt. Carmel Ridge” (photo) first appeared in New Plains Review print and online 2017. “Blue Abstract” first appeared at Inscape Journal of Brigham Young University 2017. “Leaf Image” was published in Twyckenham Notes 2018. “Synapse Tree” first appeared in Mud Season Review 2018. “Coral I” first appeared in Packingtown Review, Issue 11, winter 2018. “Latent Heart,” “Color Abstract in Pastel Tones,” “Color Field,” “Violet Field Action Painting” and “Golden Bridge” were first published in Empty Mirror in 2018. “Cups Design,” “Golden Bridge 4,” “Still Life; Objects on Table plate photo,” “Pool at the Edge of the Mountain,” “Sphere and Rectangle,” “The Magic Circle” and “Transforming” first appeared in aamora: An International blog for artists, photographers and writers in 2018. “Golden Bridge (red sky 1-5 10-4-2011” was first published at Wise Review 2018. “Still life; Objects on Table” (blue chair, orange wall) first appeared in Duende 2018. “Brick Image” and “The Outhouse” (photos) were first published at Reservoir Journal 2018. “Transform to Lesser Fade” and “Crying Woman” (b/w) first appeared online at Thirteenth Nerve 2018. “Bruce Chapel” (photo) first appeared at River River Writers Circle 2018.
