zoe olesker’s Reviews > There There > Status Update

“let the wind sing through the holes in him, listen to the birds singing. tony isn’t going anywhere. and somewhere in there, inside him, where he is, where he’ll always be, even now it is morning, and the birds, the birds are singing.”

“this brief despite everything, which is maybe what faith is.”

-

“before she can even think to pray, she has to believe that she can believe.”

-

“she dos and doesn’t want to know. she wants to stop time, have more time to pray, to prepare. but all time has ever done is to keep going.”

“his heart, it’d been beating for him all this time, his whole life, without even trying, and but he can’t, he can’t do anything but wait for the next breath to come — hope that it will.”

-

“he’s here, and he’s dying, and it’s okay.”

-

“he smells gunpowder and grass and soil. a mix of dread and long-dormant courage”

-

“the sound she makes comes from below her feet.”

“he feels each tiny blade point of grass pushing into his face. it’s all he can feel, those blades of grass.”

-

“but a hand is slapping his face and his eyes open and he’s never believed in God until this moment, he feels God is in the feeling of his face being slapped. someone or something is trying to make him stay.”

“he wants to hear the drum one more time. he wants to stand up, to fly away in all his bloodied feathers. he wants to take back everything he’s ever done he wants to believe he knows how to dance a prayer and pray for a new world. he wants to keep breathing. he needs to keep breathing. he remembers that he needs to keep breathing.”

“this unflinching stare into the void of addiction and depravity, this is the kind of thing only a camera can keep its eye wide open for.”

-

“time only seems to have skipped, or to have sped by without you when you looked the other way.”

-

“that’s their culture.”
“what is?”
“taking over.”

“they’re all feathers and movement. they’re all one dance.”

-

“people don’t want any more than a little story they can bring back home with them, to tell their friends and family around the dinner table, to talk about how they saw a real native american boy on a train, that they still exist.”

“you watch for bobby’s stick to go up. when it does, your heart feels like it stops. you wait for the first hit. […] your prayer will be the hit and the song and the keeping of time. your prayer will begin and end with the song. your heart starts to hurt from lack of breath when you see his drumstick go up and you know they’re coming, the dancers, and it’s time.”

“you do and don’t want to be there. you want to drum but also to be heard drumming. not as yourself but just as the drum. the big drum sound made to make the dancers dance. you don’t want to be seen by anyone.”

“before anyone was awake, your mom was crying into her prayer book. you knew this because teardrops stain, and you remember tear stains in her prayer book. you looked into that book more than once because you wanted to know what questions, what private conversations, she might have had with God.”