November
Your breath draws gasps across the sky in long strides, like pale pink and orange geese, beaks filled with sad songs of morning. The moor is dark, shrouded in fog and misty contemplations. Rumination: I think, darting forward as if startled, but such movements diffuse in time with the heat of my breath, and a vague peace returns. My eyes stagger across the broken china landscape, and you follow silently behind, dressed in dull cloth like pears.
Somewhere below, or further out, or beyond --- somewhere, a song arises like the crying of a child tapping at the empty door throughout the night. It weaves its way past me like a scent; it, too, I have forgotten. I remember nothing of what I tell you. My lips are loosed only when my memory sleeps dreamlessly.
The sunrise never comes, held at bay by grey fingers of fog which tremble under the strain. The sky is a stone temple: deep, opaque, immovable. It holds all answers, buried in its imperceptible rituals. There are no riddles, only questions; the Sphinx has faded beneath ice and dust. Future and past, indiscernible, wander through the present, holding dim umbrellas over shadowed shawls.
The sea --- I had forgotten the sea, or part of it. It lurches, taking the reigns of the world with it, and the mountains slide across the flatland toward it. In a few moments --- or days, or millennia --- they are gone. I hold my breath.
You remind me to breathe, settling yourself inside my tired gasps with your own, holding space open, carving out a place. Raindrops fall from your fingertips, splashing with faint music against stalks of red dirt below. I find a crevice, a hollow between the stems of two rustling leaves, and lodge myself there. The thoughts rush off again, but evaporate and leave me. Repeat. I hear the rhythmic twitch of bird feathers floating heavily on your breath.
Somewhere below, or further out, or beyond --- somewhere, a song arises like the crying of a child tapping at the empty door throughout the night. It weaves its way past me like a scent; it, too, I have forgotten. I remember nothing of what I tell you. My lips are loosed only when my memory sleeps dreamlessly.
The sunrise never comes, held at bay by grey fingers of fog which tremble under the strain. The sky is a stone temple: deep, opaque, immovable. It holds all answers, buried in its imperceptible rituals. There are no riddles, only questions; the Sphinx has faded beneath ice and dust. Future and past, indiscernible, wander through the present, holding dim umbrellas over shadowed shawls.
The sea --- I had forgotten the sea, or part of it. It lurches, taking the reigns of the world with it, and the mountains slide across the flatland toward it. In a few moments --- or days, or millennia --- they are gone. I hold my breath.
You remind me to breathe, settling yourself inside my tired gasps with your own, holding space open, carving out a place. Raindrops fall from your fingertips, splashing with faint music against stalks of red dirt below. I find a crevice, a hollow between the stems of two rustling leaves, and lodge myself there. The thoughts rush off again, but evaporate and leave me. Repeat. I hear the rhythmic twitch of bird feathers floating heavily on your breath.
11/12/08 |