bell-mare

Don't ask who cast this shadow, don't tell me what the sun should want. The reach of limb, the sweep of the sky. The weeping wounds that closed so long ago. This flesh infested with dreams and memories, the heavens surrendered to silhouette swallows and drowsy crows. The world fled its flesh and forever haunted ours, its songs resonating in our foolish throats, its will the folding of our slippery tongues. The trees sway and the rain descends to the brutal earth. The light goes, along with everything i ever thought was mine.

There is a ringing in every inference, slow circles walked in the cold and dark. Branches scratch at the windows and the storm holds court in the dizzying depths of the midnight sky. Somewhere there are voices, caught up in the lively wind. Somewhere there are reasons lighting inhuman eyes. The heart skips and scrapes with each percussive gasp, the walls ache and sigh with the weight of the falling wind. The old ways pace the earth while we speak aloud to our hopeful myths, always howling for some intercessor. These faiths of dull extinction coiling on our nervous tongues, these prayers that stick to teeth and ceilings. Belief a world burdened by words while the night keeps its own counsel.

The world turns, spilling rain and shadow. The world turns, its clockwork of boiling stone and hushed vapor ticking away amid these dead-eyed stars. I pace the floor, I trace the path the rain removed. These words seep through, the spells and invocations of the beaten heart and the bruised bones falling beneath my feet. The wild wings and the spent breath of beasts wasted on the confusion of thing and thought. The old ways and bitter warnings treated like fairy stories while we bow and scrape to the fables that endure. Our lives a foregone conclusion, everyone knowing how it is bound to end. The lucid chemistry of living enough to fill that broken cup, the self the meat on the map of knotted proteins and native grace. The wolf awaits, its skin the restless appetite and the focused wish. When the wolf is at the door, I don't break my stride. When the wolf is at the door I don't hesitate to let it in.