She falters. He is not home. The shadows cast on the floor are too short, the heavy wet smell of dark still only a memory from last night, it is barely past noon, the bord song is still too strong, he can not return until the heat, the sound, the life lies down, turns its head, closes its eyes. Then he will be back.

She is still, so still time starts to stream past her, she shifts her weight, the rocker glides back and forth, back and forth, she closes her eyes. Safe now, while the light, the sound, the life still surrounds her.

Minnie slips off her shoes. Her tiny brown heel sinks through damp grass into moist earth. Adults who caught a glimpse of her at these games were shocked by her face. A look of fiery concentration and sacred ectasy. The face of an artist, a genius, a martyr. She searches for the connection. She finds it: the note. It is almost impossible. Her young delicate body, her tiny mouth, her thin lips. Her voice. As she transfers weight from heel to toes she forces the physical sensation into song. It is not a child’s song, not a nice song. It is the sound of hail on a tin roof, of running rivers, of mothers dying for their cildren, of salmon swimming upstream, of lightning shattering the dark of a moist summer night, heavy thunder, pouring rain, the first and last feelings of great lovers. It does not interrupt nor shatter silence. It negates it. While she is singing the thought, the memory of silence is as horrible as the emptiness Lucifer and his followers must have felt when cast from the kingdom of God. She wields her voice, it explodes from her. It is the sound of creation.

Her eyes tell her the house is dirty, poorly furnished. What difference does it make? It is not the absence of anything that banishes life from this house, it is a presence. It sits down on you when you enter, like the hostile breath of the alcoholic, so thick it seems timeless, it creeps out into the yard, held at bay only by the light of the sun, at night it seems to fill the world.

It was him. Even in his sleep, his body, the lines of his face, his hard crude jaw, his physical appearance alone was a denial of pleasure. What could she do to make a nightmare beautiful?

She slides again into the past, remembers the stone, still radiating the heat of the sun against her bare calves. The silver moonlight sifting through the tree’s summer foliage. She slipped into the stream, the water cold sends a simple song suddenly from her throat. After she finished singing she glanced at Luke, his bright eyes seemed to gather all the surrounding light and send it back doubled. They stood silent, staring at each other. Then she asked him of his studies. Luke’s voice, fast, agitated, he had explained and denounced the writings of Plato that night. In a voice that belonged in another world. Quick, rich, alive, he had told her of the allegory of the cave, of Plato’s realm of pure ideas. They had laughed at the notion of the world being nothing but shadows cast from a reality occuring behind them, while chained ot the floor of a dark cave. He had gone to college. She did not laugh anymore. Her life had become that world of Plato. The only light, the only dance distant memories of her childhood.

She looks down at the quilt in her hands. Hands that are thirty years older than she expects them to be. It is almost finished. She does not know who makes these quilts. When she disappears into her memory her hands work of their own accord, stitching colors into complex themes and patterns. She gets the bits of fabric from the church, from Mr. Tuttle’s niece, who still has memories of Minnie’s voice, before it was locked away. Minnie remembers Mr. Tuttle’s attempts to convince her parents to let her go away to school to study music. She pushes the thought from her head, slides again into the past.

Mr. Tuttle smiled. Minnie could take the simplest composition and breathe such force into it. And yet she still had such tiny hands. He watched them, brown from all the time she spent outside, dance across the white and back keys. Minnie did not play the piano, she controlled it. She yanked harsh sounds from it, coaxed gentle sounds, and forced explosive sounds. When Minnie crash-landed on a piano bench, she was no longer a sixty pound girl, she became a 600 pound song. And yet he simply could not convince her parents to take her talent seriously. He knew Minnie already had composed several pieces of music, that her abilities were far in excess of anything he felt confident to shape, and that any school would take someone of her talent on for free, if only they got a chance to hear her play. But her parents expected nothing more of Minnie than they did of their own lives and simply laughed at him when he tried to convince them.

Minnie looks down at the old hands again. She sees that the quilt is finished. Will she tear it apart as she has torn apart so many others? Or will she go in search of something to trade it for, like the tree? Something else beautiful that will eventually collapse under the weight of John’s presense.

It is late. She rises from the chair, moves to the kitchen, hides the quilt in a cabinet, she can decide what to do with it in the morning. She begins preparing dinner. The cabinets are crudely hewn wood, the counter has evidence of the past days meals. The floor is spotted here and there with old stains. She adds more salt to the stew. John is always complaining about her cooking. He will be home any minute, he will enter without speaking, sit down and eat. Then he will complain or go to bed. They have repeated this ritual nightly for thirty years. Eventually she will, climb the stairs, join him in bed, hoping he is asleep, hoping he will not have any desire to touch her. She will stare at the ceiling late into the night. She has become so used to their ritual that she often finds herself staring at the ceiling in the early morning, not remembering how she got there. She slides gently from the bed. John will be up soon. She returns to the kitchen, quickly prepares a pot of oatmeal, sweetining it with sugar and adding raisins. She prepares John’s lunch, hoping he will eat in the field and not return home at noon. John comes down, grumbling about the early morning cold. They eat in silence, on opposite sides of the small square table.

After John has left she pulls the quilt from the squat corner cabinet. She lays it over the table, trying to get a good look at it. It is probably the best one she has done yet. She gets an old basket from the hall closet, folds the quilt neatly, sets off for town. The early morning air is crisp and cold, with each exhalation she leaves whirling streamers of warm breath behind her. As she is getting closer to town she hears the percussion particular to big horse drawn carts. It begins to catch up with her.

The two horses heads are engulfed in the steam of their warm breath. The cart behind is simple, but well-made. The driver is dwarfed by a mountain of singing quilts in the cart behind him. He slows the cart, comes to a stop, grins down at Minnie. His mouth is overhung by a large white mustache that flows into a beard spilling off his chin. “Might I offer you a ride into town miss?” Minnie smiles up at him, thanking him while nodding her aqcuiesence. He helps her into the cart. Minnie tries to hide her intense curiosity about the singing quilts while they go through introductions, but he catches her fleeting glimpses. “I have to cover up the birds when it gets this cold, otherwise they become ill, or at the very least depressed. And it’s very near impossible to sell a depressed bird.” His chuckle is deep, his laugh is full of life. Minnie grins. He reaches back and lifts a layer of the quilts so Minnie can see the cages beneath. Closest to Minnie is an old iron cage with a brilliant yellow canary inside. When the man lifts the veil of quilts the canary bursts out with song. He turns his full attention to the little yellow bundle of feathers. “That’s funny, this little fellow has been quiet for quite some time.” He pulls the iron cage from under the quilts and hands it to Minnie. The canary continues its song. “Well, I think she must be meant for you.” Minnie blushes, she wants the bird badly. “I don’t have any money sir, but I do have a quilt I just finished yesterday.” Minnie pulls the quilt from her basket, its vibrant colors and bold composition alight in the morning sun. “Well, I’ll be. Don’t get much call for a quilt like that round these parts, ma’am. But I wouldn’t wonder if she fetched a pretty price in the city. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you the cage, the bird and some seed to feed it for that piece of work there.” Minnie tried to remain calm. She thought about the song of the bird in the house. What it would be like to share space with something other than John. She nodded in agreement to the deal. The man smiled and they talked the rest of the way into town. Minnie turned down his offer of a ride back to her house and after picking up a few things from the grocer she walked back to the house with her bird. The canary sang softly the whole way home.

She got back to the house a little after noon. She set the bird on the table and started to clean the kitchen. She spent the rest of the afternoon absorbed in cleaning up the house, so much so that she almost forgot to start dinner, but the lengthening shadows caught her attention before too long and she set to preparing an explanation for John.

He returned later than usual. His face , clothes and hands covered in dirt. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Abruptly the singing stops. For a few seconds every muscle above Minnie’s waist is rock. After a subjective eternity she forces the marble muscles of her neck to turn, her flesh a landscape of goosebumps, her head struggles to catch up with her eyes. The birdcage lies sideways on the floor, the door has been ripped from its hinges. The walls and ceiling of the house back uo, out and away. She doesn’t feel her feet, head or eyes move but suddenly she is staring at the yellow rag in John’s giant course brown hand. The rag that only a moment ago seemed filled with invincible song.

Now she feels her eyes. Wet, they start to roll back into her head. She tries to travel back, to thrust herself thirty years into the past. But the little girl will be no part of this. There are some burdens which cannot be borne. The little girl inside Minnie’s mind had travelled a battered loveless landscape, for thirty years she had carried Minnie. But this cut too deep, slid too fast into the subconscious.

Minnie tried desparately to disappear.

The little girl threw back her head and screamed. The sound filled Minnie’s mind, shattered thirty years of memories, of days filled with nothing, they were suddenly gone, unimportant.

After a few seconds of standing perfectly still, Minnie’s jaw dropped. Dammed for thirty years, her voice forced its way out of her throat with explosive volume. For seconds she allowed her voice, uncontrolled to shatter the oppresive silence that had sat stagnant in the rooms of the house for so long.

John dropped the canary. Bewildered he resisted the temptation to cover his ears.

As her voice began to echo, Minnie realized she had spent the last thirty years dead. All the energy that moved her body, her flesh through her marriage had been stolen from the soul of the little girl she had been.

She noticed the sound, the rush of air, through her throat for the first time. She relaxed her jaw, pulled her vocal cords tight. The scream soared upwards, took form, became a crystal clear hawk-flight high note.

John stood. The expression of bewilderment was slowly replaced with rage. She was singing.

She let the high note float further upward as she searched for the right notes. The order the song, that would give shape to and destroy thirty years of emptiness. First the despair.

Her voice sagged. Slid down to the nadir of her range. Raspy, heavy, the song slid slowly, a single rock in a slow motion avalanche. Her song was of uncarved marble, of unwritten stories, unspoken words, of every wasted moment, every missed oppurtunity, every ignored avenue on the way to greatness. The song of every man and woman who watches their life slip thorugh their fingers like so many unrecognized grains of anonymous sand. Clumsy fingers fumbling the infinitely delicate, destroying moments of beauty not with action but inaction.

The rock picked up speed, the avalanche returned in earnest. She gave voice to the vertigo, the feelings of inevitability that become an integral part of watching your life slip out of your control. Anguish. Her song slowed again, exploring the depths of hopelessness, the feelings of uselessness. Distant, hidden in the darkness, was a flicker of hope, the near silent theme of revelation.

John shook. Deep dpwn he was afraid. Afraid of the person his wife could be, had been, when they had met. He had wanted to crush her. Had felt his power, his purpose, in suffocating the force that made her so alive. For thirty years he had forced her to submerge this art, this power. But now he knew he could never destroy her, that only she could kill her song. John was not aware of this counsciously, he only knew he had lost some battle which defined his life. He stepped towards Minnie.

The theme of revelation grew. It took form, soared in every direction to fill the darkness, to eradicate shadow. For the first time in thirty years Minnie knew, felt freedom. No one could take away her song. Her voice strained, how she ached for an orchestra, her song was a symphony in her mind, her voice but one instrument. She could hear the oboe, had ideas for variations of the theme with both the violin and the flute, she felt creation as a flame.

John’s eyes glassed over. He lifted his hand, hard from the shovel and plow, above his head. His fist hung for a second, suspended in the rich sound of Minnie’s voice, then swung forward. His knuckles crashed against Minnie’s collarbone.

The flame, the sun, her song was of creation now. It was not a gentle song. It was had and clean, full of power that could reshape a world, a power that would brook no compromise. The slow but unstoppable juggernaut of glaciers, the rage of an uncontrollable forest fire, the onslaught of a flash flood, the hand or voice of an artist.

She felt the distant nagging of her shattered collarbone, but held her shoulders taut, pushed the song forward.

The song became an earthquake. It shook with righteous anger. Rage at evey person that had tried to find power or life in destroying others, in stopping or enslaving the work of other men. And a rage that many of these destroyers had been given their power from their victim’s fear. That no man could control another without the victim’s sanction.

John’s fist buried itself in Minnie’s stomach, forcing her ribs out of place, one puncturing her lung, his fist fell against the side of her face. A barrage of blows, his fist lifted and fell, lifted and fell.

Her eyes swollen shut, her lungs filled with blood, Minnie’s body finally crumpled. Only gasps escaped her throat. But Minnie was shrouded in song. She knew she was dying. But she knew she would die free. That while John could beat the biological life out of her he could never control her again. Fear had never belonged in her mind and would never return. Her song soared towards resolution.

John stood over her broken body. Her blood slowly forming a pool on the wooden floor. He could hear bubbles burst in her throat as she forced the final notes from her lungs.

Now her song was of joy. The joy of understanding, the joy of creation. The awareness of man’s true place in the universe as observer, artist and creator. This joy gave way to peace as Minnie’s oxygen starved brain shut down.