Narrated by Slava Bart
The waves are killing it. It hasn’t long. Till then, it dreams.
Once part of something larger than itself, a greater whiteness, haunted by the echoes of a crumbling world, it gazes up into the night, calls to the specks of white, believing they once formed one perfect whole, wondering if they suspect that it exists. No sign.
Yet, moved by their ghostly light, it dreams. Of white on white. White planes and icy light.
All windfall, green-and-golden edens; brindled, dappled, stripe-or-patchwork seasons; all troubles and all toils, all sounds and all furies; all watery, riverrunning who-knows-hows turned simple, solid, crystalline, still.
Glacial and madman-lucid – days divine! Days of not-an-hour, not-a-minute, not-a-speck of time. A thinging nothingness. An alien mother tongue:
Znania
Svet
Yav’
It spreads its dreams like wings over the inky waves. It soars – a light leviathan of white – to freeze the sun. And does not notice how it falls apart.
BIO: Slava Bart was born on December 2nd, 1983, in Kokshetau, Kazakhstan. In 1994 he immigrated to Israel. He is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, researching the negative attitudes of creative writers towards academic criticism. Previous publications include stories and poems in Contrary Magazine, arc (IAWE), The Ilanot Review, Voices Israel, DeadBeats Blog, Cyclamens and Swords, Red Fez, and Liquid Imagination.