The Cut
A Tale from a Year in the Life of a Vine
Copyright 2021, Zachary Zundel
Have I been here before?
It is cold. Cold enough to numb the knowing and re-knowings. Yet somehow, something, somewhere stirs a memory.
I have been here… before. Wherever the here is. But why now, out of the frigid depth of empty dreams do I stir?
Then I hear them, first as distant trills of terror and then as cracks of bending back from down the rows.
The me of different plantings, staggered down the line, cry out as frost stained limbs are hack and hewed away.
The bitter cold, a cradle of quiet and calm, is broken as waves of heat roiling from a horse drawn furnace descend.
The fire is the cause of this waking, from the peace of a dream to the misery of the day.
A cruel promise of the pains of the prune.
An agony of knowing that my remains will fuel the beast as it feasts upon the other we.
There is no running. For I am rooted.
My lot within the lot. And in this knowing the true cruelty of fate.
I have been here before, year upon year. Sorrow upon sorrow. What pleasant bliss the barren winter brings.
The knives work their crescent curation. Purposeful with precision.
Then, with two crack I am bent and bound.
Spread wide to the sky.
Why?
I was so much more not a moment before.
The cold intrudes again, as the sounds of horse retreat. There is a cause for this bondage. A control in these cuts.
The knowings are slow as the pool of flames away.
