Ascension
Ashlea Lierman
arlierma@mtholyoke.edu

[Author's Note: There is a lot of literature quoted in this fic. Most of it is pretty recognizable, but some of it isn't. I don't claim it's all mine, but one way or another, the way it's all put together is. My intent is not to infringe, however, but merely to honor.]

"You do me wrong to take me out o' th' grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead."
     --/King Lear/, 4.7.51-54

Mother.

mother i am new-born progeny of the gestation of you inside me mother in your bleeding i am free in your enfolding sweetness i am called to pay my debts for behold she will come with fire and with her chariots like a whirlwind to render her anger with fury and her rebuke with flames of fire forever and ever amen.

mother for you i will call on the flames. mother for you ever for you and all our kin the fallen of the scourge to be healed under our hands the sickness gone from our land in your consuming raging fire and the wounds left to close over us o rise again. rise again

we will raise them again and pray for those who chose and oppose. o my people what have i done unto thee.

Mother, I am calling.

mother i am summoning your vengeance i will thrust my hands into the flame and i have found what you whispered mother the black glow of the summoning star and i am with you mother i am calling it your whisper of the path to a history beyond my mind and i will find it mother i will bring it to us. mother i am rising rising from the void in which you cradle me until i find the stars rising to the face of fire rising to the mad roil in the dark rising. rising. mother i am reaching.

Mother, I am burning.

mother i am embedded in flame it is dark here but i am not afraid. mother there is pain and its voice is the voice of doom its syllables lick at me chilly fire but i have it in my hands and it must come and mother i am coming home to you but it is locked inside me it is consuming me and i am burning mother but mother i am burning for you.

mother why don't you save me? son of your rage and you will not protect me. mother am i betrayed? mother why your oblivion?

mother you push at me back to my consumption and our world lays its arms over me and they are sharp wires mother my eyes are fire and where are you? i took your gentle countenance beneath my arm to guide me mother but your eyes are silent oh mother its laughter devours me and my pain is for you mother it eats me and i suffer for you for your world and you are silent. oh mother suffer me not to be separated. mother let my cry come unto you.

Mother, I am dying.

mother i am swimming in my agony and i were dead but for the fear of your love mother as you wake me time and time again and force me on my feet. you do me wrong to take me out of the grave. mother i longed for you for silence but now you thrust me into noise mother why?

i am rising into the heart of this world. it is enfolding me in acid wings. i am becoming one with the planet and my ascension is my destruction. mother why have you forsaken me? you are at peace you have had your sacrifice but yet you leave me to be gutted and this world tells me i do wrong in loving you.

mother i am disappearing. is it joy i feel?

mother the rest is silence but you keep it from me mother i have found the ending and i am ready to go home but you have turned hateful and in your burning eyes i see that i am doomed. mother i have been your tool and i have been your slave. mother i love you but you are my disease.

mother i am dying. little boy i am dying. world of enviable infants i am dying. you that look pale and tremble at this chance that are audience to this act had i but time i could tell you -- but let it be. say only that i have fallen. so may you all.

i crave the darkness i want the void but i am braced against the illumination that threatens to blow all apart. i am propped in the doorway, and though i have no will i continue to stand and stagger and stumble and drown. let me drown.

Oh, Mother, let me die.