Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Author:Sarah Shun-lien Bynum [Bynum, Sarah Shun-Lien]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Archaeology

WHEN SHE GAZES AT HIS BODY, crouching on the carpet, the only words that occur to her are: Orchard. Swallow. Bell.

One morning her father found in their field a ruined coin. In the very place where he stood was once a town, but then an empire collapsed and the buildings languished and the river overflowed its banks, flooding everything. This is what she imagines. How else does a town sink into the earth? It lies buried far below, where all is dark and still, but on occasion some small thing will loose itself from the town and feel its way to the surface. Her father found a coin. Another man found a bottle. If it were not for the coin, and the bottle, they would not have believed that a town existed.

She hears the word bell, or orchard, or swallow, and she experiences a strange surprise, like the feel of a coin in the soil. These words make her wistful; they overwhelm her with longing. Not for her orchard, nor the bell in her church, nor the swallows that nest in the eaves of her house. For something else altogether, something she would have forgotten completely.

She wonders: Why should these words pierce me, if they are not the remains of a currency I once knew how to spend?

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