Mercy & Elsie

/ Daniel Swearingen

Precious Memories,

Mercy. Says “Elsie are we in a special time, sitting here waiting for fire flies to come by? Upon this porch so still, I look at you my sister, it seems sometimes you’re not breathing still”. “I’m not sure Mercy, say’s Elsie, with her slim smile, a crooked endeavor left from her own style. She’s finishing a blanket crocheted from yarn, the silver needles clash, sometimes just missing the white skin on her arm. And just like a summer globe that shows a different biosphere, the two sisters sit, and watch the world unfold.

Precious Memories

The slope of the green hill glides by, the creek at the bottom, letting the Ozarks cry, and still they sit like stone, two sister’s immortal, statues, time seems to leave them alone. The graveyards down there, in the meadow, with weeds and snakes all around, “Mercy, says Elsie, do you think, that your Sam’s still in the ground”? “I know it was so long away, he was so full of spirit that night”. “You mean”, says Mercy. “Yes” her sister says the night he held that awful knife!

Precious Memories

The string beans snap in two, sitting on the porch the silver sterling bowl, sits like fine china between two. The clouds hang low in the sky, between two sisters there sits no lie. And time and fortune roll, like precious memories, the lines on their faces go. “Elsie”, says Mercy without looking around, “I know of no other I’d rather be around”. They look at each other, and there’s a giggling sound. And just like each evening for many a year. Summer, fall, and springtime, and even on a cold night when the winter is near. Elsie and Mercy sit and stare, looking down the hill, knowing what is real, from life that used to be. But those were the days, when a stranger wild and crazy could be hidden away,

Precious Memories

Elsie slowly stands and stares, down at the base of the hill a man stares, and as the evening shadows start to fall. Elsie, looks at Mercy and she says, “I think that old Sam is here to call again”. “May be my lovely sister we should finally bring this ghost to an end”. “For though his love was different, he was crazy within”.

Precious Memories

And so the screeching owl comes to call, all around the valley it summons spells of awe. And the two sisters known for playing special games, send Sam Lakeef, that murderous thief, that one who held a knife against Mercy one day. They bind him away.  Oh the familiars of the forest come down from a tiny little sphere to unhallowed ground. And two sisters in a coven that live from day to day, They send him so far away. So very far away.

Say’s Mercy, to Elsie, “the evening air is so cool, it’s as if somebody left us, somebody that we knew, must have been somebody that we knew”.

For my great aunties the witches who taught me much. – דָּנִיֵּאל

38 thoughts on “Mercy & Elsie”

  6. Your writing set my heart and memories on fire. I had Aunts like this, in West Virginia. Same type of front porch. You have presnted them as they are in my best memories. Thank you.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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