The Dove Also Shall Dwell with the Dog – Réka Nyitrai

July 28, 2020

Vacations

 

On that day I return home from school and find only an empty house. My mother, who usually greets me at the kitchen door, absent.

… not in the kitchen … not in the bedroom … not in my room … not in the bathroom … not in the cellar … not in the backyard … not in the vegetable garden … not even between the walnut tree branches…

I call out her name, several times, but no one answers.

Tears begin to form when I hear a sound that feels like a sparrow’s chirp. Suddenly, I see the rosebush. A rosebush, that seems to grow out of nothing. A red rosebush in full bloom, not far from the unused doghouse. 

Even now, after thirty years, I remember that dog’s name, the dog that was brave enough to run away.

 

 

Marriage Proposals

 

At times she was speaking spring rain, the kind that slowly patters on rooftops and makes you want to lay down your head in flower fields. Other times she was speaking summer rain, the kind that leaves behind puddles that invite you to jump. Off and on she was speaking growing grass or ladybug and sometimes even tree wound or swaying branches.

When she spoke to him rain, spring or summer, it always felt like his late mother’s caress.  When she spoke to him grass or ladybug, it always felt like the first kiss given by the neighbor’s daughter.  When she spoke to him tree wound or swaying branches, it always felt like a marriage proposal, so he changed girlfriends.

 

 

The Dream Catcher   

 

I once saw a woman whipping the devil’s tongue with a rose stalk.  I saw her at dusk, from my grandparent’s window, where I was spending my days as a potted gerbera.