TheKnell

I sealed my doors, bolted tight the windows and locked the shutters. The wind screams, a banshee cries upon the hill, some vague swathe of white billowing against the night. I wrapped myself in burlap, packed my ribs with leaves and moss but still my candle has blown out. In darkness I spark the wick but only sticky ash stains my fingertips. Waiting for the cold, dry revelation of morning, no light dares traverse my shivering horizon. She shrieks a lamentation, I unfurl my bones and surrender to her vengeful sky. Asphyxiating on dying stars, coughing up only blackness from the hearth of my chest, long bereft of light.

I found you at true west, your hair tucked back beneath your collar. I had strong hands - lean fingers that splayed their mirth across your collar bone. I could almost wear you inside out like shearling, a small animal warm and curling underneath the forest floor. I am always late you said, pulling out a cigarette like you expected an answer; but all I could do was stare out at the sun chewing my lip and wondering if you remembered my name.

I almost caught you waiting for a sign - a token under his knapsack a traffic light beating the sky You mistook him for beauty ethereal waste and the worn out shock of his questions filling your head to the brim and hiding in the corners What do you see in him empty houses with gaping doors and the harsh gag of September sun crouching down in the pipes waiting to explode He fought the good fight you said brazen as a lizard and thrashing fluid filling the space between you like a leviathan Where your insides felt safe from the crowd and night's shade grew such long disturbing shadows and I never knew we existed.

sometimes a whole month will go by then for a while it’ll be every single day before another long stretch we near and then pull apart on our own orbits as if the moon opening and closing its eye watched only us but on each return it’s like no time has passed you come in from the snow the smell of white light and coldness on you and it’s like waking when I didn’t realize I had drifted off.

I resurfaced, the taste of salt and rare coins in my mouth. I moved upward like a swimmer and kissed you properly so I might not be alone. The streetlight poured silver down your chest through the open window and your hair sank pale and fragrant into the edges of my vision in the dark. I could not see your eyes so much as sense them, as if they were familiar stones on a path I only walk when I am in love. I watched the curtain swaying nearby, numb and ornate and rhythmic, now and then touching your shoulder the way I used to wish I could. It moved like a sleeve just before a hand emerges, restless yet un-alive, prophesying in half-