Brief Moments of Lucidity

BY: ARABELLA MCCLENDON

An angel fell to earth. They alighted gently beside me and shone steady and silver as they walked. We left the main street behind for the quieter neighborhood in the west. Fewer people on the sidewalk, more plants in the gardens. We walked together through the elm trees and into the dunes. The angel remarked they could feel the earth turn under us, and so it was. Beach rosehips blushed along the ground next to gnarled dune pines with their needles splayed like the hands of dancers. The ground welled up to meet my feet and church bells rang in my ears. 

I asked the angel if this place looked like anything they had ever seen before and they shook their head. Strands of silver hair snapped against their cheeks. The angel said they had only ever been an angel before. They told me about a stone cliff gasping for breath over a glistening sea of chrome. A shore of swaying dancers and a glistening sea of chrome. A city made of daggers and ruled by children on an island in a glistening sea of chrome. 

The angel asked me what I had seen and as we walked down the road, scuffing up sand in drifts behind us, I told them bout the shores of the great lakes, scattered with shards of blue and white water-softened glass. And the sunrise mist on the Appalachians, moving like a light scarf through a lady’s arms. And how every diner in America has almost the same menu. I told them about the beluga whale I saw in the aquarium when I was eight years old, how it drifted slowly up to block the blue light coming through the window in the side of the tank. I told the angel how the whale made me alone cry, of every child standing at the glas, very suddenly and passionately, but I was unable to tell them why. 

We reached the beach. I sat down on the seam where the sand met the road to take off my shoes. The angel waited patiently. When they offered their hands, their hands opened many eyes and I took them. We walked slowly across the sand, stepping between the sunbathers, staring with their eyes shut into the diffuse silver light. The angel showed me many more eyes, speckled like the stones under our feet, red, and green, and pale blue. When we reached the water, it was at once the water and the sky as well. There was no line at the horizon, and all that lay before us was moved with one rhythm and was silver. 

The angel waited patiently for me to undress and fold my skirt and blouse. I lay them carefully on the wet sand. I told the angel about the city bus. The seats upholstered with scratchy fabric, the same pattern as the carpet at a bowling alley. And the lunatics dangling from the straps on the ceiling, raving, slumping over, inventing new dances and leaning over the seat to whisper in my ear, “God hates you, stupid bitch sitting there with your coffee. Don’t you know god hates you.” 

We walked into the water together, me and the angel. I told them about strawberry fields growing cool under blue storm clouds. I told them about how on earth we murder prophets while the sea foamed around our ankles. The angel embraced me then, wrapped me in their pale wings and brought me down inside the water. I picked my feet up off the stones and there was a moment of fear, and I clung to the angel, but they pushed me through the water and the fear and deep into the eye of the needle. And then I was unravelling like a ball of yarn, and then I was the end of a long, silver string twitching in the current, and then I was alone.