You find me on the rocky shore of a dark lake, the quiet wound round my heart, a gentle serpent I have learned to bear. So long now there has been only the hush of the water, and the hiss of the wild wood behind. Once there was the staccato crack of my own footfall, now silent as I am washed and still in a moonless night.
First there is only the idea of you, hazy in the winter light. Sleeping, I do not want to wake. The idea I could turn and pull close, my hands empty and searching. Then the gentle call of your voice, elucidating want without exception. I remember your voice, and follow, my feet bare and blue. Now you are as close to me as if your lips were brushing my ear and you whisper back my inmost heart's secret want but as your own. Now knowing you, I know your breath on me would set the day afire.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
It Will Find Us
I must tell you now, it will find us. It will not be the spark of metal in the night, the pool of warmth wasting away on asphalt. Despite your fears, it will not come pressed against a car in a poorly lit parking lot, your cheek a dark smear on the glass, the stars staring dumbly down. It will not be the delicate pop and whisper in the night, one pupil dilated to bring on a longer, shivering sleep. You will not clutch your heart in the lukewarm tub, left hand going brightly numb as the weight of oceans crushes your ribcage. Sadly, you will not scream the name of your beloved while kneeling in the turmoil of a bank lobby, the hiss of radios wild outside.
I wish I could say you would clutch the hand of your youngest while a kind-eyed nurse administers that sweet final injection. I cannot even mention the possibility of the dark heady smell of burning oil, the constellation of glass spread before you as you realize the radio plays on but something vital inside does not.
It will not come any of those ways. Instead, it will come down a brightly-lit corridor and it will not reason, it does not know. We comfort ourselves with the words, as the incantations our watchwords, chanted over and over again at night; virus, prion, bacteriology, deoxyribonucleic acid, immunosuppressant, and so on until sleep finds us again. Despite this, it will find it's way out of the shaft, the airlock, the sliding glass doors. You will carefully tape the windows and doors but even then it works within you, as in your neighbors, your children. And before it's over, you will beg and beg for the claustrophobia of the car trunk, a warm tailpipe burning your leg. You will count and re-count the small blue pills, even before the television reports flicker out. But you too will start to feel the tell-tale signs and know that nothing nothing nothing you have ever thought or dreamt will ease this end.
I wish I could say you would clutch the hand of your youngest while a kind-eyed nurse administers that sweet final injection. I cannot even mention the possibility of the dark heady smell of burning oil, the constellation of glass spread before you as you realize the radio plays on but something vital inside does not.
It will not come any of those ways. Instead, it will come down a brightly-lit corridor and it will not reason, it does not know. We comfort ourselves with the words, as the incantations our watchwords, chanted over and over again at night; virus, prion, bacteriology, deoxyribonucleic acid, immunosuppressant, and so on until sleep finds us again. Despite this, it will find it's way out of the shaft, the airlock, the sliding glass doors. You will carefully tape the windows and doors but even then it works within you, as in your neighbors, your children. And before it's over, you will beg and beg for the claustrophobia of the car trunk, a warm tailpipe burning your leg. You will count and re-count the small blue pills, even before the television reports flicker out. But you too will start to feel the tell-tale signs and know that nothing nothing nothing you have ever thought or dreamt will ease this end.
"So Lovely was the Lonliness" - Antony Hegarty
I swallowed stones
to fill the ache in my belly.
One caught in my throat,
weighed down words
so that they gathered in the dark canal of my pulse.
Others were ground to dust
and with each heartbeat
ran wild, surged within me.
As a spider web, as antique lace,
delicate cells
replaced with stone and ash.
I felt myself become brittle
and finally broken.
My eyes, blank as granite.
I heard marble crack as I opened my hands,
white-cold skin seeking yours.
to fill the ache in my belly.
One caught in my throat,
weighed down words
so that they gathered in the dark canal of my pulse.
Others were ground to dust
and with each heartbeat
ran wild, surged within me.
As a spider web, as antique lace,
delicate cells
replaced with stone and ash.
I felt myself become brittle
and finally broken.
My eyes, blank as granite.
I heard marble crack as I opened my hands,
white-cold skin seeking yours.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Scent of Ozone
I could not help it. I could not keep myself from it, I did not know then it was not wise. I opened the door, stepped out and into the storm. There was only the wild wind lifting my hair, the scent of ozone and the whipping water. If you had a voice, if you said something, it was lost in the chaos of that downpour. I did not know that to stand alone there was to invite something more, to tempt the gods too far. I thought then, that I was brave. Instead, I tasted steel and all was white and I was lost.
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