fable

Dusk settles and the mosquitos descend towards the flesh, salt and sweat and that dwindling bar of light painting the broad horizon. The green over blue view of that brilliant sky gradually extinguished, leaving a starker, denser palette huddling in my eyes. Colorblind, I see better after dark. I am waiting for that first full press of dark. It feels as if I am waiting for you.

The night is warm, and deep with stray imaginings. Soft conversations and coffee flavored kisses. The sounds of companionable laughter and the drift of eyes and fingers. The whisk of clothing sliding off and the echoed voices mingling in the steam of a shower. All these tired treasures and silly leanings. The weight of absence you assign to everywhere in the world you aren't.

It is a fantasy with-in a fantasy, a tale that requires all that is known to bent and twisted, reality tied into knots and bows to match these dull whispered wishes, these yearnings that burrow beneath the skin of every night. I am a stranger and you are a ghost, the past seeping up the drain into the present. I am all words and bones, you are all blood and fevers. It was a lie before, when it was real. Now, as heat and shadow crowd these rooms and sweat beads upon my face and limbs, you are a story made up to explain the vanishing of the moon.