Chapter One
Sometimes I'm paralyzed
by my love for him. He calls me from his bed in
the middle of the night and, you know, I can't
resist. It's the way he calls, not sleepy or
frightened or crying, but determined and aware
and awake....
Mama?
and I can hear the question mark so insistent it
isn't a question ... it would break my heart not
to answer.
In my heart he opens the door to this vast
terrain of fear. It's a fear stretching out
beyond these young years of mine when mortality
is supposed to be so inconceivable. How have
mothers down through the ages survived their
love for their kids? The thought of his
mortality is abysmal to me....
One afternoon we were at the fair down by the
lakeside, and a vendor had in captivity one of
the owls that have invaded the city ever since
the lake first appeared three years ago. She was
explaining to some other mom's kid how, far up
in the sky, the owl can hear a human heartbeat,
and even at that very minute I thought to myself
this owl could hear Kirk's little heart as I
stood there holding him in my arms. Could it
hear his heart when he was still inside me three
years ago? Was that my first betrayal of my boy
- his birth, exposing him to the peril of owls
that hear heartbeats? Every night I wait for the
sun to set before writing this, there it goes
now, slipping down behind the San Vicente Bridge that
crosses the lake to the northwest, I see it from
my window ... sun goes down, sky goes dark, lake
goes black, and owls swoop across the rising
moon like leaves blown loose from some
phantasmagoric tree twisting up out of the
ground and my voice rises from the crypt of my
consciousness shaking words off like topsoil.
Kirk and I are bonded by a cord of blood that
runs from his heart to my thighs. Menstrual
waves crash against the inner beach of my belly.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Our Ecstatic Days
by Steve Erickson
Copyright © 2005 by Steve Erickson.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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Our Ecstatic Days