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Giving Up The Diamond
It was only a one in a million chance that I would make it with my love intact. That is why I chose to possess a one carat diamond ring. I wore it like a sundial so that it shone and flickered around my neck. Now with the full light of the winter Canadian sky spiralling into it, it was one of the most beautiful stones I have ever seen. I was often dazzled by it. I had never looked twice at diamonds before. But once I had started, I never wanted my eyes to leave them again. Crossing the bridge back into the United States of the Apocalypse from Canada, I had the fear of losing something I had found. It wasn't the money that they were worth, it was what they exhibited. Suddenly diamonds became both vast intricate northern landscapes, that I wanted to travel through always. However I had to have many of them, in order to give myself the illusion that I was completely surrounded. It would have been good, if they were only worth two quarters each. So I could have every finger adorned with them. I watched how it shone in the snow, and I had watched how it had shone in the sunlight. The refracted colours from the precious stone lit up the skin into slithers of rainbow across my face. With this diamond I could cure the abandoned cities. It was the charm that I would carry back into the old heart of Detroit. I believed that the diamond had made me strong. On arriving back in the United States of the Apocalypse, I was soon scouting around near a huge sewerage drain by the Windsor Bridge. I thought I had heard the sound of kittens. During the search my hands had become cold. Since my fingers had contracted, the brilliant diamond ring suddenly left my hand. It just dropped off in the deep snow and fell into it without a sound. It was the way that people lost things in this snow every year. People could uncover mittens and beanies two years later dethawing in their backyards. The big white snow gulped sound and turned everything it touched to silence from the clouds down to the ground up. I hoped the snow that fell onto Detroit, would eat the sounds of gunfire, and that the dilapidation would drop into it and be vanish. I had lost the ring and for a moment I was in shock. It was as though I could never live without it again. It didn't seem fair. I had only had it for a few months. At first I didn't know what to do when it left my finger. I felt lonely. I thought this is crazy. I've lived all my life without this stone and now it's gone and I don't know what to do. The beauty of the diamond had reminded me of cut crystal, ice and breaking snow. It was one of the most beautiful things in the world. It caused me much pain to lose it having had it. It felt like I had slipped down a crevice, but I didn't give up. I went over to the giant galvanised pipe and sat inside it, looking out at the ice rain in the distance. The whole area had warmed slightly as it does upon first snow. But the ice rain would arrive in a day or two. I was worried for the abandoned animals that froze pipes and rooftops in the bitter chill. The kitten noise continued, but when I followed it, I came to a broken section of pipe where the wind was curling under. I had been mistaken about the origin of the sound. It had existed in much the same way, that I used to hear my mother sobbing from another room, when she was not there. Or the way that children simply shrieking in play, would often sound on some days like small animals in pain. I left the pipe with that let down feeling of not being able to fill my backpack with a distressed animal. There was no adrenalin to keep me fired up and I grew cold. I had followed that sound out here for no less that twenty minutes and my boots were soaked through. Yet the snow was brilliant white, even without the sun peeking down though the clouds. The snow was shining up all around me like fields of hoar-frosted flowers. I felt dull and small on its surface. I hung my head walking away from the pipe. I was thinking about how empty my life was becoming without the diamond ring, and the small movements of rescued animals. My heart was light. It didn't take much to bring me down or to lift me back up again. Then an amazing thing happened. I saw a tiny dot in the snow to my right a little past my footsteps. I thought maybe, then I was so frightened that I stopped thinking. I carefully went down into the snow on my hands and knees and took my mittens off. I reached down into the hole with bare fingers and there was the ring. When I found the diamond, it was like racing up into the sky and retrieving a small sun. The diamond had lost none of its lustre, yet the moment I retrieved it a new feeling accompanied it for me. I looked around at the snow and thought, this landscape is my diamond. It was in the diamond's absence that the snow began to shine. It was only when I was near the Windsor Bridge looking north, that I had these small words come into my head. I walked back into the deserted city. Although I still admired the ring, the weight of it had become a little heavy for me. I had started to notice its monetary presence. What of someone stole it from me? What if they tried to kill me in order to steal it? I could never leave it on my finger in Detroit, so I put it in the secret compartment in my vinyl belt. I thought about how the diamond ring could best work within this sick society. |
