The Séance
by Lily Axelrod
We begin in silence
Each of us tense and still
As if the air were slowly gelling around us
Encasing our straight spines and proud shoulders
Making a mold to split, refit, and fill with molten metal
To commemorate tonight's transient and terrible ceremony
In a permanent and peaceful statue.
Nor does our leader move, until our eyes are all on his face.
When he and we are certain, time begins.
We count and inhale together
Our abdomens in unison struggling against congealing air, shattering stiffening plaster.
We’ve spent months preparing for this.
On certain nights we met in a certain room,
At the appointed time we sat in our appointed chairs.
And our leader trained us to know and interpret a man long under lime.
We learned his inspired life
We absorbed his code, precise but flexible
Until the strange markings he left behind were closer to our intuition than the alphabet
Each elegant curlicue had intrinsic meaning obvious to us as arrows signifying direction,
Numerals quantity, colors fruit's ripeness.
We translated each detail he recorded into an intricate physicality
Some marks for breath, some for heartbeat,
Some for words and some for silence,
Teeth, tongues,
Feet, lungs,
Until we were convinced beyond fear
That we could recreate his mercurial emotions,
Replicate his mischievous genius,
And reimagine his anticipated death.
And now we rely on muscle memory to carry out his instructions:
To force his turmoil on unprepared, unwitting, but perhaps understanding ears:
Requiem aeternam dona eis, domine.
When our lips close
The warm wood and glowing glass cling to the chord
Holding it close for a moment before releasing its gentle intimacy to the room.
We exhale together, collapsing into the applause and our own separate minds.