Echoes

In the wayward depths of distance, voices of a thousand men are bolts unto the ground. Before their feet, a faltering, a tremor clipped of sound.

Who charred the vast horizon and replaced the lathe with man?

To study landscapes boldly, shift space and mark the plane. These are my footprints, my fingertips small caverns for the clams and the carts we place around them topple as they drag.

Your shape against the sand devours a shadow where it shakes: make it quake. Thrust your hand before the firmament, damn it with a din. Then let us plait these braids together. Let us sing.

Here

Peeling through byways, examining corners for posts overturned. No map, no compass, no leaf to catch a breeze.

A distracted voice calls: for whom do you seek? The eternal question prompts the will to break beleaguered breaches, but there are no answers beyond the bends, and the jagged, winding wend of it leads few to face its edge.

On the way to Calvary, a cowgirl lost her horse. This is not a caution to make meaning of, of course.

Hello

(Source: renee-claire)

Remember

The day you walked in without purpose to a dimly lit room filled with promise…

What was weight but a flutter of pages swooping to meet the ground. Those traced remnants of misery, let them slip through your fingers - the worn and comfortless cloak of wretched familiarity has buttons too black to ever be resewn.

Through the door there are new surfaces for scribbling and no pockets in that dress to keep a pen.

(Source: renee-claire)

Zolt

I remember you in stages, years shared in mental snapshots of my life. The book of all we knew is etched inside my chest for these things we treasure are not for mantelpieces, misery or gloom. You wanted absence without pain and I’d like to give it to you, but when she asks if I still miss you, my heart clouds faster than the moon – she never walked the other side with you, those paths of unrelenting rain.

My rock, my mirror, misery and fear, I held you higher than the sky – until it fell. Through the window of a hundred days before, we’d seen it coming and still, you wished it there. So, when it crashed, I threw you under, revealed the feelings I’d kept covered and released the pain I felt to echo yours.

I learnt then that mourning is a beat that has no jaunt, it comes as it will and there is no lull to ease it through. When it came for me, I had no clue. You wanted light so I laughed for you, but I found it easier to speak in epitaphs, poems laced with loss. I said:

I did not want to be you,

stuck in the frames of yesterday’s feature,

always reaching for the remote.

Those words were true, but I built a vacuum to trap out time and your heart stopped still. You were still there when I left you, but I was consumed.

That last day, there were no words: I held your hand and knew. Before the call came, I was ready. I had my shoes in my hand, my nerves wound tight. The wailing didn’t help. I wanted to draw out the world around you, keep you close.

When they say I took it well, I smile. How could they know that once the duties were over, I hid for weeks – losing myself in books and sheets of paper – in order to find the peace you’d always sought. When I knew you’d found it, I got back up and resolved to go on living. For me, this time, in the way you’d taught me to.

These days, they go to the lake. They light candles, watch the swans and cry. They think it strange that I haven’t returned, question why: I haven’t the heart to tell them. Instead, I think of the lightness, the laughter in your eyes and the shades of grey. At last, it’s as you wanted. The dark is past and you’re still here, closeted in love within my heart.

Brow Beaten: One leaf written about eyebrows.

They perched like caterpillars on a slight incline, inching slowly upwards with any slight hint of reaction. On sultry days, dew fell and nestled safe upon them, an undulating umbrella against the elements. They were the pinnacle of expression - dark and sure – but Fashion had it in for them. From the depths of her brazen catalogue, she pulled a razor from within its depths and let fly.

In their absence now a blankness presides, and a pencil attempts to supplement the work of two.

(Source: renee-claire)

Mintistrations: one leaf that is nonsense

Once, upon a mutton leg, a leaner lamb was heard to shed:

Beware the fresh! The minty stench that smeared upon the shorn, and fed with waving wheat and grasses sweet, would cause the sharpest nose to sniff and snuff that morsel down.

(Source: renee-claire)

Will

When we first met I thought of little else besides ham and cheese. His presence bore with it a platter of promise, each entrée an event met joyfully by the senses. I savoured each eagerly and delighted at the thought of things to come, thinking nothing could ever chase away that taste.

When friends came, chattering between idleness and tea, I thought myself back to where he was and where we’d been. When our synapses danced…

Waltzing around courses in culture and excellence, tangoing between sets of treacle and trash, we cut figure eights around the swiftest feet thinking time less than gracious for cutting in.

Words then were icing, smooth and sweet, a treat tasted guiltlessly with pure pleasure. On a wink and a prayer, we flew from here to Mars and back again with less than a carpet for two.

Before the descent, I thought lightly of pumpkins and the air grew thicker than either of us expressed. The unspoken weight leeched into the shadows, accumulating things I felt I could not share until we drifted, our steps too heavy for our dancing shoes to tread.

Occasionally we meet these days and traipse within that former space. The haze retreats until we’re back to where we were before the smog set in. Now there, within that weightlessness, I think of him again; a pastry laden with ganache - rich and smooth and lovely.

Dangerous, but perhaps…

Whethering

Come hail, or shine. There are choices to be made and sills to wander out from. The horizon is as distant as the front pocket, but save a light for later – space changes and we adjust. If there’s an I, it’s angling for a better line of vision; colour, or the illusion it possesses. Spectrum is less than tertiary now, still the wheel turns and we consider virtue in the merging of a fall.

Number

Life resonates, a four-letter word spat succinctly from the lips of the dangling. Somewhere between presence and a second chance is the startling grey of grave illumination; I listen, and play at numbers. Four is death, which is the ploy of five – an oddity (which finds its roots in three, which might be lucky). Or not. Either way, it is a motor-load of family and a battered-up sedan to follow home. Stepping out, I find a cliff and pitch it over: dust to glass, matches to ashes – all things move full circle. The next time I think about these things, this window will have changed. I will be older, but the scene will not have altered: bright light, satellite, parking lot and meter, you will propagate while I diminish. I thank you. Next time I know to pack my bag with change.