Writing On

Writing on Flat Stones

By Patricia Ducey

You've come to tell me of your regrets.

"What does it matter now," you laugh, as you light another cigarette. Three thousand miles you've come to tell me of your regrets.

The sun burns the backs of my knees as we inch forward up the face of the pyramid. Elisio, my graduate student, steps nimbly up the steep incline, and I hurry after him.

"What do you want me to say?" you call to me.

I stop and pretend to rest, for your sake. You wipe the sweat from your lip and gasp for breath that is already beginning to fail. I read you the cuneiform on the flat stones that cover the face of our step. I have made a study of these stones and the god-kings who wrote their stories upon them; no one understands better than I their tales of blood and conquest. Each new king would write his history and build his own funeral chamber atop that of his vanquished rival to ensure he was nearest to the gods forever; thus, grave atop grave, the pyramid grew, a funereal bridge between the matted jungle and an eternity of revenge.

I will build my tomb over your tomb like a king of Copán.

You confess you were never happy with her; you should have stayed with me.

"We're falling behind," I answer.

I turn to the final row of steps that lead to the altar where humans hearts were torn out of bodies in supplication to angry deities.

Bees will build their hives in my long hair. The winter wind will scatter your ash, mingled with the dust of my own heart, sacrificial, eternal.

It is cooler here at the top. You marvel at the valley below; all I can think of is how close I am to heaven. You ask if I will stay with you until the end.

Summer rivers will wash clean the stones that wrote your story, and the gods will never find you.

Patricia Ducey lives in Southern California. Her screenplays have placed in the top rounds of the Nicholl and Austin competitions, and her fiction appears in the-phone-book.com, in upcoming issues of Snow Monkey, Mississippi Review on line and Gator Springs Gazette.

Back to the main page