Still scenes from the painting of a magical world


It had been the party of their times. Trolls, gnomes, elves, brownies, pixies, fairies, goblins, ghouls, all witches were invited too. The mincing pirouettes of their faces spun around the magic mirror, wishing for their fantasies on this one night of wishes coming true… the witches spun spells that wove dragonflies out of the moonlight caught in cobwebs, and everyone made the beetles scramble on the backs of their shells as they were turned over, cars stopped by on their long roads to nowhere and danced about with the music of their horns enthralling the night, flatbed trucks, pickups, u-hauls, floats, lorries and all manner of big wheeled automobiles stopped in to look at things, the wondrous night of paper hats and acrobats. The beetles were suitably put out at being knocked over but there had to be one scapegoat for the overall good time, everyone agreed, next summer it could be the mice, they squeaked too much anyway. Lake water shining through the trees was all the light that was needed on the fringes of the biggest party in the woods. The little folk flew up and over the short leaves to light up the trees with their darting flight. Cakes rained down into open mouths through teams of generous butterflies that pulled the right sized pieces up into the night air with their teamwork. Wine sweeter than grapes was drunk in cold small sips delivered to thirsty mouths after dipping the folded leaf that held the liquid in the cold lake. It was the best party that the woods had seen in everyone’s time it was agreed, the best and most beautiful. When it was over, the cricket cymbal band and the drummer ants were disbanded with medals of honour (quite a large number had dropped dead of exhaustion as they’d played on and on and on) while the feathered warblers were gifted sheens to their wings by the pretty fairies who were asked for dances by almost all the elves present. The look on everyone’s face was flushed, happy. The sun rose cheerfully over the treetops and cast a warm glow over the hanging streamers, empty leaf-chalices, lost slippers and gloves, even the beetles had been righted and scurried off into their wooden homes, all butterflies had gone into the flowers to rest their tired wings and the birds were all asleep in their nests. The little folk had gone off, some in pairs and unlikely marriages, gnomes with pixies, brownies with witches, fairies and elves, goblins and trolls, all were either at their homes or someone else’s and the great party site was completely deserted. The sun had never seen such a quietness in morning hours. Bustling into the woods it shone down on the lake and wondered where everyone had gotten to. Staring at its reflection in the blue water it reflected on the signs strewn about. Must have been some party, it thought, and pouted at not being invited.

grey



You think of love sometimes in the pebble-quiet silences that have fallen upon your life, about how you had so much of it when you were young, so young, and how the possibility of complete bliss lay before you with its buttons undone and warm square of skin lit by the soft lamps of your absolute trust, so beautiful and right that you could not doubt it, pursue it to the end you would no matter what oppositions were thrown in your way, and so you took it, reached out and took it, held the grace of it with both hands, cupped its glowing flame in your palms and felt its heat warm even the distant chills of your heart so much so you rose up into the air like a hot air balloon incapable of not rising once breathed into with warmth, your feet seemed not to touch the ground, they jerked in the instinctive steps of a dance you knew was truly yours alone, the expression of joy that you had waited your whole life to make, to find, to be, and now you were, not alone, not one, but joint with the missing part of you that had roamed the world waiting for your touch, the perfect heat of you that made you look into the mirror with glowing eyes because you had found the end of your quest or so you thought, marrying tenderness with care you brought home the groceries and the car, made wooden shelves for the knick knacks of your dreams, placed wrought iron hearts side by side with crystal angels carved in exquisite shapes of radiance, flowers dried to whorls of earthy brown and red, sticks of incense that filled your nights with perfume heavy as your passion, dark as the door that lay in shadow by the light streaming forth from your heart, and so you thought it was bliss, you thought it was perfection, you thought you couldn’t want anything more and thinking so you stayed out late at night just watching the moon in its empty space, too large for stars to play with, watched it stand in the night sky looking down at the world, unmoving, unblinking, watched clouds swim over its face and disperse, watched the majesty of the glowing sun rise that turned the silver moon to pale grey and finally made it disappear completely, watched how the sun then stood in its solitary silence and burned itself down to a red ball of solitude, tired, waning, sinking down into the mantle of the land to be replaced by the white light of the moon in an indigo sky, the eternal dance of the two as they just brushed past each other, the only two of their kind, yet unable to meet and keep each other company in the endless expanse of sky, you watched and thought of nothing and when you got home you smelt the soup cooking, and it was not the soup you liked, and you wondered how could this be when you never noticed it before, but now you have so you ate it anyway, it grew more inedible with every bite, you forced it down one swallow at a time, you ate until you’d cleaned the bowl and when you lay down in bed a coldness took hold of you and you could not shake it, instead you curled yourself into a corner and tried to sleep, you cannot face the honesty of love because you lied when you ate that soup and now you don’t want to answer any questions because you are terrified of the answers they might reveal, you fall asleep with a tearful voice in your head asking you what’s wrong and in the morning when you wake you are alone, your half of the cupboard faces an empty other half, the kitchen is clean and silent, the dog’s out on his business and the newspaper lies freshly printed on the doormat, awaiting your attention, you stoop to pick it up and suddenly realise how many years its been, you and your newspaper sitting absorbed in each other at the breakfast table, you set the egg timer and every ticking second seems louder than your heartbeat which is pounding in your ears because the enormity of the truth has set upon you now and it has not set you free though in truth that is what you are, free again, alone as before, just the apartment, newspaper, dog and job, the streets filled with strangers, the open windows above brick walls, the flowers in the hedges and the sun, the moon, the limitless sky, all yours again, to watch, to be, your hands shake as you spread open the paper on the table and stare blindly at the first pages.

Page from today

I roll slowly over to my back. Overhead a late noon sky is making my eyes water with its expressionless immensity. In a distant corner of the canvas above me, a small cluster of clouds are slowly being herded together by a slow but purposeful force. I feel the breeze make its invisible signs above my outstretched body and the noise of traffic is distant as the sea, it hangs in my hearing like the grass that stays comfortingly in the corner of my vision, endless, unchanging. I take a deep breath and contemplate the sky.

A speck high above me is looping widening gyres around a steeple, round and around it flies, sweeping its span of a sphere to include the world of my vision in its flight. The steeple spire sticks up straight into the sky like a moral of magnetic proportions, drawing the bird to its example by virtue of its immobility. I wonder in a dreamless haze of drowsiness whether the bird is a pigeon or a hawk or a gull. Sparrows, I know, do not fly so high. Chirpy, social, modest birds, they stay close to the warmth of the land as it unrolls before them, whether in the form of trees or buildings. I have noticed them having a particular affinity for electricity lines and washing wires, noting too how they never mess on anybody’s clean laundry drying in the sun.

Returning my attention to the circling bird I watch it swoop and glide around the thin spire as if practicing its flight lines, to what end I don’t know. Maybe birds have hours of rigorous flying that they undertake as exercise for keeping their wings in prime toned condition. I have to smile at the idea of a PE instructor for birds, pecking truants for slowdiving and falling into the ocean to splash about instead of sticking to their charted training flight routes. I reflect idly on how important it is for birds to build muscle for endurance flights, especially if they are the migrating kind that regularly travel absurd transatlantic distances that even jet-engined planes must have stop-over flights on. Thinking about it makes me sad as I am struck by the high number of birds that don’t make it on such trips, what use the muscle and the beauty of flight when all they manage is to drop down out of the sky in exhaustion to die? I wonder why they don’t just stay put and build fat against the cold weather instead, anything to circumvent death.

The death of a bird to me seems an unendurable tragedy, they are so light and perfect in life, so cold and petrified in death. I recall how I found the dead raven in my garden in the late summer afternoon. Its glossy feathers gleamed so black they looked polished but its beak was gaping open and its partially eaten tongue was swarming with ants. I have never seen a birds tongue from so close before, indeed haven’t even pondered over birds possessing one. They have always seemed composed entirely of wingspans and quirky heads to me. One cannot imagine them as having veins or colds.

I see before me again the grim finality of its missing tongue and folded black wings. Feel again the slow indescribable emotion that made me kneel slowly before its hardened form. Its shining wings were cold and stiff, the bird had retained its frozen form in my warm hands and its head stayed fixed as if stuffed by a taxidermist. I’d carried it indoors, found an old shoebox to hold its length and after brushing away the rampaging ants, placed it carefully inside. It felt as if there was a sleeping bird inside the stiff cardboard and nothing must disturb its slumber. And I had carried the box out to a derelict old stadium across my home. There in that broad expanse of space I dug the raven’s grave and buried it with dried beads and shells decorating its length. I knew it had to be a stadium in which it lay finally at rest and hoped its birdsoul soared content within this space where the memories of all sorts of laughter were now enveloped in a peaceful silence. Then I lay down by the pretty little markings of flowers I had made with the colourful shells and stared up at the sky.

The sounds of traffic are distant and measured, steady as my heart beat, steady as the flight of the bird over my head, circling my consciousness round and around until I fall asleep in the sun.

The transience of...

The ball of fire that used to turn in circles now hung lonely and frozen above the trees in the icy night. So he laughed, angry with his faults. That morning in the sun he had shattered the old ice sculptures that stretched their fragile beauty across the length of the lake and built anew a colder, thinner fear. But the shape of it did not please him. Inspired by the trees, it twisted upward under the stars and was altogether too harsh in the light of winter. Like a coquette exaggerated on the vaudeville stage, flouncing past with rouge-painted cheeks and golden wig of tight curls capped overhead, it appeared a mockery of reality. The boring still life form. Standing back to contemplate it in the artificial glare of attention, the ice stood illuminated in all its alienation from his idea of beauty. He decided to work upon it afresh.

With chisel point as precise as a claw he scratched away the bits that stuck out too far. Scraping, moulding, cutting, slowly he worked his way into the heart of the form, steadily freeing the image that danced before his sight. Refining her fragile beauty, he cut away all traces of dirt impurities from her face and started tracing the line of her lip with a gentleness that made his hands shake in the dark. He wanted her to be perfect and he worked on her slowly, unhurried as a lover of old who knows all the contours of his love even as he traces them in the dark. Her smooth shoulders he carved like a caress in the cold and got bitten by the frost for dropping a warm kiss on their rounded muscle. Her scarf he draped off her arms like broken wings. In the glory of her feet he placed delicate flowers wrought from the smoothest layers of snow. The textures of her skin and hair were moulded by the shadowy light of the stars.

When she stood completed, he could not resist her lure and rubbed a pail of river water slowly into her flesh, smoothening out its flowing lines. Sparkling wet in the moonlight she stood as tall as him and her head as made to proportions fit exactly into his shoulder. He rubbed her cold back, sighed into her neck and dreamed of nothing, at peace in the night.

When he awoke in the morning, his clothes were soaked through and the puddle that lay at his feet was drying in the sun.

VAST
flames


a great movement starts along the floor in the dark. the majesty of a dying emperor
sounds its sadness across the hallowed wood and the softened sounds begin to turn.
you lose yourself in the wilderness
an arena is darkened to fit all thoughts with appropriate dignity.
yet it is not decorum that dances silently around you. a great defiance swells and rises
higher than the sun.

through the dark wooden ceiling you soar, tossed through to weightlessness in an ebbing and swelling silent heavy sea.

you will never rise again

this vast balloon of sadness burgeons over the sky and it has eclipsed the chandeliers of glory. above the lighted glass, wooden stairs sing of a divine madness meant for someone else
but it is you who is here instead.

a chance onlooker


you watch a stranger’s love strip gently before you. i am not your lover you long to cry
but flow towards it transfixed by beauty and helplessness as it unfolds its wrappings with soft, soft movements

slowly you rise as if bound to a single thread moving upward and so stand immobile. the air around you drifts into itself and forms pictures of indescribable beauty, forming and dissolving like smoke wreathing dreamshapes out of nothing.

a grey cloud whispers love into your ears
you turn to look at your reflection, silenced by the sight.
all you can do is look back.


you have eavesdropped on something that is not yours
but it will hold your hand until the end


you reach for it in the darkness


in the fullness of the moment what turns to you completely without fears and ghosts haunting your memories?


i stare straight ahead as you hold me in silence.

More music inspired mania
VAST
Frog

mad arab jangling spurs across the hot terracotta courtyard sees girl cowering by the water fountain and lifts robe to reveal missile from god, a suitable rod to govern a child and when she blanches and turns to run he laughs and slaps his horse into a gallop, is off before she can scream. a nerve wracking experience – to be shamed and not have the opportunity to voice indignation over the episode. she shakes her head and fills her waterbag with the cool flowing water, watches ants walk industriously across the narrow rim of the fountain in single file trying not to get their feet wet. a giggle escapes her because it all seems so absurd, ants on a water fountain marching along and a man who just pops out his penis and waves it at her, a complete stranger. it seemed more wormlike than anything, a big heavy worm twisting in the sun. she giggles again and claps her hand to her mouth at the naughtiness of the thought. on the day of her wedding another robed man enters her chamber and shows her what men do with worms. she does not giggle this time. neither does she notice the ants crawling along the water faucet in the bathroom when she rises slowly to wash herself. the sound of running water brings her no joy, as terror and pain in the dark surface under the harsh tubelight and the wash up takes place after the fact. and yet the ants. she wonders how far away from home they travel when they march for food.

more writing inspired by music:
any guesses which song?
(suzanne: Leonard cohen)

jesus was a man who walked upon the water according to the book nobody wrote that tells you the story of when time began so that you learn to speak the truth with your mind and in the silence you sense there is something more to say but no one will tell you what it is and when you speak your words drop down like pebbles on a slope that’s rolling straight to the bottom and no, no more dropping beads down the rosary that is two sizes too small, count your prayers instead because there are so many and even a blind man can be shown the light with the world that he can hear and touch, the feel of skin on a blind palm, the sound of breathing in a blind ear, we live so blindly with our rosaries and idols and prayers and the leaning we suffer through for faith but it is really a matter of trust and no one will tell you this but with the coming of the new messiah there is one face that will not be moved and it is the face of the devil and he will weep because his throne will be lost and all his riches strewn over the holy land and the ash of bitterness will settle all about his high, proud features, burnt roses black with gall will rise into the tears that flow from his torn sight, a blind man defeated by light, he will be smote down by a force he cannot embrace, almost human he will be in his despair and no one will turn to give the blind man a hand because in the psalms and in the bible all written by the invisible voice there are no provisions for a soul that knows not what it is and so we die and we die and we die blind as bats, sinking into the water, reading words with no authors, blinded by faith, blinded by sorrow, blinded by the light because jesus was just a man and he destroyed everything when he started collecting souls like you collect marbles and in your heart you know that the reason you live in darkness is because he talked about the light and closed the door in your face when you sought a glimpse but the lepers who limped into his waiting arms were given souls brighter than the mad blood rushing in your face for it is you he turned into the devil and you will suffer for the sin of curiosity and if you’d only put down that lamp at midnight you would not have singed the golden shoulder with your betraying drop of oil and no sacred scar would have torn you between the mountains and the sea, forever drifting in the black night of your soul with the lonely cries of voices you cannot understand and faces you weep to hear for you are abandoned and the light cannot save you, it will burn you into cinders and that is why you hide, hide under the dirt, cringing at the sun while all above you golden haloes rise to glory and you sit in the acrid dust of darkness and eat your naked heart out with your hands that twist like roots, like roots they burrow into grubby soil and in the moment of the last reckoning it is him you hate who turned you into this, a wretched sinner at the base of a cross, a wooden motif of repentance that will not save you now. you will turn to dust. you will be scattered like the wind.

(inspired by the air song ‘sexy boy’)

sexy boy with the perfectly chiselled enamel teeth.
smiling like a gleaming toothpaste commercial.
freeze frame.
what did you think about today?
another face, another body, a bed softer than water.
boy with no wisdom teeth makes smiling the base of his career.
women and children flock to his open arms and he’s gotta hug for everyone.
flashes pop bright close up pictures of his red lips on covers of glossy paper that the world swoons over and some wonder angrily how such perfect features can exist while everywhere else people make do with bad breath and split ends and teeth that do not look carved out of marble. eating cheese pizza with strings of mozzarella hanging from between his teeth looks so damn sexy on him.
in restaurant mirrors, late twenties acne-scarred men flinch at their reflections as they compare their hair and teeth to his immaculate beauty.
their faces seem flawed and broken by a will that does not love them as much.
some of them beat up women and dogs, some abandon their children, some attack strangers for the challenge and in each episode they see his face before them and in their minds they are smashing sexy boy to pieces, tearing that smile off his face and shattering his perfect teeth, splitting his perfect lip, burning his perfect skin until he is as broken and flawed as them.
in the will of hundred millions who love him, sexy boy is hated with as much power as lust can stir in the hearts of enraged lovers, women want to claw his eyes out as he looks up at them sleepily from his sexy white bed and their husbands want to hammer his sexy unseen penis to a stake for being as perfect as the rest of him.
but sexy boy is never afraid.
his smile beams out from golden lights relentlessly in a blank eyed generosity for everyone.
to people he seems like he is smiling and staring and standing and sleeping for them alone.
in his eyes heat swirls and rises for everyone, women, men, gays and children too.
sexy boy with his perfect teeth and hair always looking so deliciously healthy is a computer simulation.

freewill, played again

another session on pre-ordinance was underway. the debate that needed illustration was the two sided detailing of the eternal game. hidden amidst the dark tenements of broken stone, the faces peeped out at the scene on the city street. a puppy short of breath was bouncing down its paved length with soft ears flapping in the wind. occasionally a dry burst of exhaust would make it sneeze. the watchers knew it was only a matter of time before the black clouds consumed everything as they did so often in the previous examples.

already the grey ocean of early light had rolled into the skies. all was misty with expectation and the black and white puppy with the thin tail was racing towards the bin. as the ineffectual sun rose to a tired half height behind the buildings shadowy outlines, the cars that had stirred early to life multiplied and came prowling hungrily down the street.

the puppy with its round belly and thin tail looked so comical as it hesitated on the side of the street. it had to decide whether or not to take that first and final step away from the curb since it had never been out unsupervised before. the stroke of fantastic luck that had let it escape through a car window was now a defining moment in its young life. the challenge of the bin stood across the road filled with goodies beyond imagining.

the faces watched and waited as the puppy widened its bright eyes in the direction of the temptation across the street. an almost visible energy line shot like a bolt up through its paws and into its warm little black snout. with a jerk of its head it galloped straight and joyfully onto the street in the exuberance of the young.

a huge black diesel truck ran over it…

and a little mass of fur lay ironed out like an impressionist painting on the gravel. it lay in the shape of an arrow pointing towards the bin of last surprises.

the waiting faces sighed and slunk back into the shadows, whispers about death and choices drifted into the air. a stubby legged furball had just illustrated another point in the diagram of life and death.

but no one noticed the cry that never came except for the black bellied diesel truck that had swallowed more than the form of a puppy. later in the afternoon, the truck witnessed tears and hysteria as the house it stopped at to make a delivery recognised the remains of a shredded collar hanging off its otherwise immaculate fender.

the lesson had been pre-arranged and the puppy was fated not to last the dawn but in the absence of morals within the story, what would you do if you had been the choiceless fender?

a story about love, contd

the mists of dreams awaited had always veiled the night from her star-studded gaze. in her secret mirror she’d seen glimpses of the life that stood before the rest, the relentless course of it as it paced ahead of them with breath as cold as the winter wind. but in her reflection there was no real reason for her choice of good fruit over the unremarkable paths of others.

always she chose apples and cherries, round, red, tart things that would hold shape to the best of their ability. she’d fling the red fruits close to the centre of the lake and watch them sink, their little reflections mirrored fractured ripples outwards. in her hand, her paring knife lay sheathed. overhead, birds inquisitive as mice scampered around the red drownings.

spring children spying on ducks and frogs called her the red-cheeked lady and smirked at the picture she made, casting fruits from her worn basket into the lake. measured aim and measured eye for apples, cherries, cherries, apples, pick, pluck clean of twig, and calm, measured throw to the water’s middle. they thought she was mad though harmless.

if she had known their thinking she might have told them about the garden under the water, the bright red garden that grew hourly with the fruits she planted. and how it had no keepers but awaited just one guest. for many years had it been grown and for many more would it stay uncomplaining and faithful to its expected visitor. all it required was a couple of well-aimed throws a day and it would stay in waiting and in bloom.

years passed by like confetti and still each morning a basketful of red fruit would find its way, piece by piece, into the green water. under the waves, smiling dolphins cavorted in her head, chucking cherry pits into the reeds. the shelled mirror was entangled with coral and little fish swam into its invisible surface with quick darts. she sat by the fallen apple tree and threw fruit over its knotted bark until her arms ached and she could throw no more.

she grew old with time and labour.

in the last year of her winter, lines on her forehead and lean cheeks that wrinkled with the rising sun made her older than the children, they had grown up and moved away and new children in the woods called her the old witch casting spells over water. they wouldn’t play when she was about for fear they’d be enslaved by any one of her particularly malevolent spells. no one trusts mysteries, not even old ones.

she would have told them then that the only spell she’d been weaving for years was love. but its potency was illusion, her garden lay untouched in its watery bed. red and inviting were the fruits and yet were they all pristine. her fingers were gnarled with twig-plucking and no one had come to take what she offered. the guest had never arrived. now as she sat mumbling to herself broken fragments of tunes that hidden ears jeered at, she knew it was no use. the garden would die with her death.

she dedicated it to the water-lilies.

to melissa, a pigeon in flight again


in the shadows of buildings, hope blooms like a lily in the cool waters of a lake. somewhere in the crumbling tenements, a girl with hair dark as wood lifts her arms up to a lemon sun. from her cupped hands, a bird restored will wing it up into the deep bowl of blue sky.

in these citified moments of peace, car horns sunder all silence into shreds of tattered thought, shadows the size of apartment complexes hood the people’s faces as they walk on. those escalator stairlines. bags and worries falling from their hands and hearts as the yellow sun breaks through the washing lines. it banishes all black smoke into the chimneys that need disciplining. she waits in the arch of old stone overlooking vistas of concrete. in her palms she holds the memory of wings ruffling the calm breezes of the sea.

in its receding, the light of day rises about the faces of people looking eastwards for hope. and even as the soot of factories is dispelled by rain clouds over the glowing horizon, all that glitters must fade to grey. in the silence of silenced machinery, something will tear loose into the sky as clouds loom over the buildings. when all is drenched with the wet of last years condensation, the sun will disappear into its little dark knoll of shelter from the storm. and she sticks clippers into hedges and prances about the tight boundaries, singing rain songs.

the little fish in the gutters splash into rainbows of fractured oil, streaking the night with colour. flies capture the light of lamps in their translucent wings and beat the heavy tattoos of flight under the setting sun. not a dog or cat stirs to noise in this silent miracle of a city quietened by golden shadows.

she sees all this in the heartbeat of the moment she holds in her hands, a living pulse warm as a feather. altogether composed in its frantic desire to ride the wind once again. a wing restored, a bird in the sky, she looks up over the windows across tv antennas as a little grey flapper makes a brief silhouette against the sun.

*

in her dreams at night there was always just one story.

the resolution it required for her hero to keep searching was the part that she played over and over again. he would put on his travelling cloak, hood his light hair from the wind and step forward, straight into the dark heart of the forest, seeking. he would always be determined to best his trials and come to her alive, scathed but so much more appealing than ever before. only the weak died young.

the empty drapes of her window fluttered as the cars drove up nightly, serenading her with their chorus of drunken songs and screeching tyres from hastily-stepped on brakes. when she found her herself reaching for the sleeping pills beside the bathroom mirror, she’d pull open the medicine cabinet and read the labels of the bottles inside it. in her mind, a warrior fairer than his horse would rise from sleep and pull on his dark grey travelling cloak, looking for her.

in the bed, under the smells and noises she would shut her eyes and lie back in quiet. in her dreams he would ride through deep dark forests, intent on his journey of many secrets. following trails only the birds had seen, she’d chase through trees taller than the sky, blotting out voices in her sleep to call out to him, her hero of the shining hair and ready sword.

at the newspaper stand, beside the barking dog and rustling debris of yesterday’s papers, she’d lean back against strangers and smell the leather of his vest. his warmth drew her into dryness as the rain pelted down on her hatless hair, with wet eyes and hair she’d burrow into him, smiling. people watched and stared and walked on by, twisting their heads for a last look at the thin girl hugging a pole.

it was always at night that he came for her. seeking for her amidst the dim shadows of trees, he’d pause and stare into the darkness with eyes that knew her heart and in his gaze she saw longing, for she had need and it was his duty to give her what she desired. railing at the stairwell she’d race down the stony steps and emerge still alone into the dark city night, her cheeks wet with yearning. but always the trees separated them. though she could see him clearly across the veils of obstacles, in the park, in the park her heart would clamour.

one night, after a persistent voice in her bed had hit her mind with his belt, sharply so as to draw blood in her thoughts and stain the white wedding gown she always wore for him, for when he would find her, she ran out into the night, driven by a love so intense she thought her heart might burst with it. tonight, the faces about her whispered, staring until the whites of their eyes passed out of her sight. tonight, tonight laughed the shadows in the trees, tonight hissed the pavement under her feet as she raced towards the park, dry haired and sweating.

the wind passed through her thin white gown like a blade as it whipped her hair into her eyes and she could see him, outlined in white, waiting with that look in his eyes again. she thought there was nothing more than to go to him and be held, just once. behind him, the river glittered with its diamond teeth, and he stood there, smiling, because tonight he had found her. through the years of fruitless searching, she would be his at last.

slowly she walked into the park. the nightlights were glowing and the trees were ghostly green. a few scraps of paper rustled about the path that led to the lake, the ducks had wandered into the woods and there was no sound but dry leaves underfoot, even the frogs were silent. tonight, he whispered, his smile tender, his arms outstretched as he walked backwards, luring her on. just a little further, come, his eyes pulled hers as he walked into the silver water. her first step wetted her gown and raised icy goose bumps along her legs and arms.

tonight, whispered the lake reeds as she stepped forward, sinking into his arms that were colder than ice. gradually, their desperate kiss of welcome froze them into a statue of ecstasy as she slowly sank to the bottom.

*

its been so long since i came here last i've almost forgotten how to do this.

ego's - - ah - well, shes older
bigger
better

and so much has happened but so little has happened that its all too much effort to recount.
i'm in love with simplicity
i hope we last forever and ever
the way the trees sound in the wind
the dots in the air

all of it and me


and a dog, too