When The Call Came

When the call came, and the wind whistled through the trees at just the right time, the gypsy girl died.

But before the call came, the Gypsy girl was severed, severed from the beating of her heart, severed from the souls that exist within her feet, severed from her wings, of brown and moss coated feather, severed from the dirt beneath her nails and branches in her hair.

Adrift, lost and aching, she became a master of weaving, but the threads she used were not woven from the tendons of herd animals, nor were they built from the twines of knotted vines, no, these masks were made of plastic and porcelain.

At first they were painful, for they contorted her nose so she could not breathe and pushed needles in her eyes so she could not see. They sewed thread through both her lips and covered the blood that ran down her chin.

But in the world she lived, everyone wore masks, and the pain was normal, and the lights were harsh and garish, and the ground was made of glass, and the voices were filled with needles, and the givings were filled with takings, and the masks she wore, though painful as could be, were not of such rich agony as it was to walk naked through that world.

And the gypsy girl put blinders on her feet, because in that world that’s what they did, and she grieved because she could not feel her Mother, and she grieved because she could not feel her home, and she grieved because she could not feel her bones.

And the gypsy girl put blinders over her eyes, because in that world that’s what they did, and the gypsy girl grieved because she could not see her Father, and she grieved because she could not feel her soul, and she grieved because…because…

Then she forgot why her chest ached so, and she forgot why her cheeks were perpetually coated in tears, and why her eyes rolled back inside her skull, and why the walls of her skull had become the only home she knew, and why she was adrift and tangled within the barbed webs of her own self-hatred.

“Why am I this way?” She asked. “Why had it always been this way?” For she had forgotten; forgotten where she’d started, forgotten where she’d gone, forgotten where she’d come from, forgotten where she’d go.

But then, one day, the winds found their way through the webs of the gypsy girl’s black mind. Tangled and twisted she was, bruised and cut and bleeding, contorted with both legs broken. She’d snapped them, you see, and in that world they lived in boxes, and her legs would never fit, so she broke the bones, you see, broke the bones so that they’d fit.

And the wind cried and called the Mother who used her tears to wash the blinders off her feet, and kissed her broken bones, and kissed her bleeding flesh, and kissed her aching heart, and kissed her rotting chest. And the wind cried and called the Father, who groaned to see his child so, and swept the blinders from her eyes, and pressed his sunlight to her cheeks.

And the wind cried “it is time, it is time” and the ocean heard the call, and the stars heard the call, and the gypsy girl remembered, and remembered she must die.

So the ocean turned to a torrent, and ruptured her woven seams, and the sun light turned to flame, and burned her rotten flesh, and the earth filled up her broken bones and the winds ruptured her brittle lungs and she screamed and screamed and screamed.

And the Mother smashed the walls, of the gypsy girls bone skull and the Father tore the mind barbs from the gypsy girl’s weary soul.

And she screamed and she screamed and she screamed, and begged for the masks and she begged for the needles and she begged for blinders and she begged for the pain and she begged for reprieve and she begged to go home, and the Mother and the Father wept while they worked but they whispered quiet lullabies into the broken pieces of her heart, and kissed the bloody tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Home,” they said, “We’re leading you there, but do not beg for pain, for in that world you don’t belong, don’t break your legs to be.”

So the gypsy girl relented, for she knew that they were right, for within the death they brought, she could finally see the light.