Empty Plinths
Daemon never believed the word diaphanous could apply to stone. Once he began carving souls from marble after he lost his wife at the age of fifty-two to breast cancer, however, diaphanous became the only word to accurately describe his sculptures. With each chip he chiseled from the chunk of marble before him, the subject’s amorphous soul began to both coalesce and dematerialize. The only way Daemon knew he had completed a sculpture was when the whole thing vanished in a soft flash of pure white light.
Before the death of his wife, Daemon’s career had amounted to a collection of ribbons from local art competitions and fairs, and a one-person show at a local gallery that featured his series of abstract, highly polished black granite sculptures titled, “Reflecting on Reflections.” When word spread that Daemon had successfully carved his wife’s soul after her death, commissions came pouring in. At first, prospective clients wanted to see his work before they handed over a downpayment. But as the sculpture of his wife’s soul had vanished upon completion, the only thing left to show them was the plinth that had supported it. And for reasons he never came to understand, the sight of the empty plinth was enough to turn doubters into believers. He spent the remaining twenty years of his life carving the souls of scores of grandparents, parents, siblings, husbands, wives, and, sadly, children.
Initially, Daemon asked clients to provide him with pictures of their dearly departed that he could use as inspiration. He quickly learned, however, that contrary to antiquated superstitions, photographs did not in fact capture the soul of any living being. So, he began asking for the possession their loved one prized above all others. Over the years, he was able to find the essence of a soul in objects as diverse as a Mason jar half-filled with murky water, a charred raven’s feather, a box full of dozens of luna moth wings, a garden hoe worn to the quick from decades of use, and many binkies, teethers, and stuffed animals.
Two of the more difficult sculptures Daemon had to carve were those of his parents, both of whom had died less than a day apart after more than fifty years together. As inspiration for his father’s sculpture, Daemon used the pocket watch his father had carried with him all his life, even long after it had stopped ticking. For his mother, he used the baby tooth of the sister who had died before he was born. Daemon couldn’t remember a time when his mother wasn’t wearing the necklace that held the bronzed tooth. As he carved her sculpture, he couldn’t help but think that he was carving not one, but two souls, and so he inscribed the names of both his mother and his sister on the plinth.
But the commissions that took the biggest toll on Daemon were those for the souls of children. While not physically demanding to carve (with the whole sculpture disappearing after only a few gentle taps of his hammer), every child’s soul he completed seemed to take a chip out of his own soul. Nevertheless, Daemon couldn’t find the will within himself to say no to anyone who had lost the opportunity to watch their child grow into an adult. Consequently, it wasn’t at all surprising that he was found dead at the relatively young age of seventy-two, lying with his hammer and chisel in his hands at the base of an empty plinth labeled, “Baby Lorelai, One Breath Everlasting.”
And now, less than one year after his death, a retrospective show of Daemon’s life’s work has drawn thousands of patrons to the Guggenheim in New York City. Every day, the curious begin at the top of the round museum by gazing at their own reflections in the artist’s early black marble sculptures, before spiraling slowly down past hundreds of empty plinths that briefly held someone’s soul. As if in a prayer chapel, no one speaks, although a few soft sobs swirl around the gallery. Despite signs encouraging the crowd to keep moving at a steady pace, the line inevitably comes to a halt when someone can’t help but pause at a particular plinth and stare into the emptiness as if looking at their own portrait and seeing for the first time in their life who they really are.
~
Timber
When I notch a groove in the smooth bark of the beech to set the sawblade, I think I hear something coming from the tree that I’ve never heard come from it before—a voice. If this tree could talk, would it say the girl’s name I carved into it when I was twelve? Dawn, I think it was. But I’m not sure. Over the decades, the letters of her name have stretched and spread beyond all recognition into something more like a scar. And even if the tree could’ve ever talked, those days have long since passed. All that’s left now is a hollow husk that threatens to crush my house if a strong wind ever decides to prove who’s really in charge. Even though the house is nearly empty now, my wife and I still take up residence inside, along with the ghosts of our son who left years ago to live in a house of his own, not to mention the original ghosts of my parents who built the house and lived here up until the day they departed this world one month apart. So, I’ll be damned if I let the carcass of a tree whose bark holds the name of a forgotten girl I thought I might have loved once fall and wipe out everything that defines who I’ve become. The tree has no fight left inside, and the blade passes through quickly. The dull thud that echoes when the tree breaks apart as it hits the ground reminds me of a moan. Standing in the new patch of light that spreads out around me, I think about the girl whose name now is nothing more than a pile of rotten splinters and a scar so small on my heart that I haven’t even been aware of it until this moment. As the sun warms my face, I can’t stop myself from wondering what that girl might have sounded like if we had ever lay together beneath its canopy of full branches and made love.
~
Paraglider
After you departed, I picked up the shadow you no longer needed, the one all fathers leave behind for their sons, the one that kept you earthbound your whole life. I could wear it as an anchor and let it pull me down until I drown in the bottomless sea of your absence, as many sons do. But I’ve decided to stitch it into a paraglider that catches the wind’s warm thermals and lifts me higher than you ever thought I could go on my own.
Now, I call the place between the vast vacuum of space and the land below that holds your remains my home. On overcast days, our combined shadow glides over cloud tops. On clear days I watch our shadow speed across the world without ever lingering upon any one place or any one person for too long. I am content living a life of orbits without you or a son of my own to weigh me down, a life where every sunrise and sunset is unobstructed and perfect.
Over time, though, I know I must come to accept that even the warmest thermals will eventually grow too cold for my old bones to tolerate. Only then will I, and I alone, finally allow myself to join you and so drift back down to earth as softly as a feather might fall. Or a shadow. Or a soul.
~
Kip Knott is a writer, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His work has appeared in Ghost Parachute, Maudlin House, Milk Candy Review, New World Writing Quarterly, The Sun, trampset, Vestal Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of stories, Family Haunts, is available from Louisiana Literature Press. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott.