Page 56 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. Iv #8

Big Air (continued)
She resisted sweeping up those papers into a pile
ning shoes. Should have worn his boots. It is
so slick he has to grab trees branches. Thorny brambles whip his face. He reaches for the bass- wood sapling at a turn in the trail – it must have tumbled down the hill since the last time he’d been up here. Last winter with Elena. A whole year since they’d taken a walk up there together, back then, admiring the delicate coon tracks in the light snow.
if only to reclaim her own place in this house, in their marriage that some days, amidst the clutter, seemed nothing more than a mirage.
Sure she could wait for his anger to die down, seep back to normal like the ocean after a tsu- nami. Live with the cold, silent seas. And let him think what he always does, that her keeping quiet means she agrees with him about all their strife being her fault? No, it would be like a walled-off tubercle in her lungs, so many it could be hard to breathe.
Now they fought about where to store the tennis rackets, for God’s sake. How did it come to this? Today it was his boots. Last week she put his book back on the shelf. Didn’t she know he was in the middle of it by the way it was open face- down on the bedside table? This morning she hadn’t pouted. She’d given up the jerky moves, the pinched brow, and instead flung her school bag over her back, nearly hitting him, and marched out without a backward glance. Some- thing had shifted, and the memory now raises the hairs on the back of his neck.
The man and dog circle the base of the cliff, and Gabe calls out, “Elena!” The dog barks, an un- dercurrent rising up into the cold air. She always chucked her cell for these hikes, but he tries it anyway and leaves a message. “Where are you?”
He tries the cliff path first. The snow is deeper than he thought, and it is icing up inside his run-
He stops to catch his breath at a spot so steep, he must hook his leg over the branch of a red cedar to keep from sliding back down the trail.
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Structural Understanding (details) each approx. 4” x 4”
by Julia Wright
colored pencil on paper
collaged found fabric