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It wasn't ruinous. It was never that. This thing that was between us. This thing between us. When we faced each other every September. It was there. This film of a reason reducing the small space between us, inch by inch. It was always there. As pleasant as a knife. As heavy as a boulder. As temporary as a goodbye. As sharp as bonds squeezing out the last of blood between this relationship, wringing it out.

What was once between us, this thing that was once there between two of us, none of us, this thing of ours wasn't always so heavy. I'll admit it. It has always been foisted upon me, sure, but I'll admit even further, I let it fester. I stood by the door, opening it further, letting her in.

But this thing of ours, that we both had feasted on before letting it rot, this thing between us wasn't always like this. At the midnight of our mess, this mass is just so heavy.

This misshapen fallible bond of ours, fraught with so much misfortune, we festooned ourselves to it though we were never tied down to anything. It's not this ruinous thing that ruined this June.

Our thing, this ruinous thing between us, this resinous thing, this beautiful thing. That's not what ruined June. No, no. Not the lack of understanding or inconvenience. No, no, it's that very understanding ruined us. We did love one another, that much is true, too much sometimes, but we only loved each other when it was just inconvenient. Then we conveniently forgot that. No, no. It's all this understanding, doing us in. We understand ourselves better underwater. We understand all too well and not at all. It's that understanding that ruined June. What is this dross that's crumbling in my hand, it was once gold, you know. It was. Really. It really was. But now. Now, look what we have done, to each other and to ourselves. We are alone, we are our own buttress.

There is silence, here. There's silence here, too much. Sometimes there is too much silence here. There's silence everywhere. It's all around me. There's silence inside my house. There is silence outside my home. There is just too much silence. Inside my head and outside of my skull as well. There is too much silence in my mind, and I cannot make my mind silent. There is enough silence around me to let it just eat me. I'm going to let this silence eat me, hoping, in hopes that it'll eat my silence as well. In order for this silence to embrace me, I must embrace it as well. I'll let you hug me, devouring the silence. This silence eating me, it will devour the remnants of what I never had. Finishing up the remains of little of what was not left behind. This silence. Let me have it all, I want to keep it. I prefer it, it's all I have left in my heart.

I need my heart to live.

I do not wish for this silence. It's not the silence I want right now. But this silence is not telling me that I am beyond repair, beyond help. It's this silence that’s No One helping me. It's this silence that disgusts me.

Break. Break your own heart. Let it break. Let it hurt. Crack it wide open. Use all your fingers, especially the ones she liked, to pry open this prism as well. Open it up. Heal. Harden your heart, as well as other parts of you. Let it go. Be okay.

In the end, at the end of that ending, you are going to have to let it go.

My heart is breaking, because I'm letting it. My heart is gone.

That crack you are hearing is not that of the heart. That crack is of you going away and my leaving you. Hear that crack. It's the collective heartbreaking.

Why was it breaking you are not even asking. My anger became caustic too quickly, do you even know the cause of it? All we have is all we had and not much else. I'm readily holding onto that while you are hastily corrupting it, corrupting that dream. We are not even sleeping together but sharing that dream. I accept this silence now.

Because this silence is an absence but my own absence is the punishment. But who exactly is it punishing?

You are holding on too tightly. I can't even say my own name, like she would sometimes say her own stupidly, I don't know what it is anymore. My name means differently to different people and not at all to me. And if I have to hold on like this then it's not real. It hurts because that was the only thing that was real.

I am going to need you to do this for yourself. I'm going to do it for myself as well. I'm going to have to do this myself for myself. You are going to have to let it go, everything, let it all go. Let go of everything.

However, I have been refusing reality, resisting it because it's so hard; for I know for a very brief time, for half a lifetime, she wasn't special because she was all I had or I was all I she had. She was special because she was, that. She was just that. Special. But I'm letting that go now. Let it go.

I know that trust. What happened to our trust? Where has it gone off to? What has our trust evaporated into? I knew our molten trust. I know our trust. I know you know that too. That very trust.

I wish you'd see just how unique your mind is, just how rare you are. I want you to know that wherever we are, I have no problem following you anywhere. I'll quickly adjust to your narrative and make room for you. There is truly no one quite like you.

At this rock bottom, which is just not my own, at the end of this line, at the bottom of this, I know this. Ultimately. No one, no one person, not a single solitary person, is worth this much pain, too much. So much pain that it would require a factory resetting to make it all better in that valley. No one is worth altering your heart rate for. Even at that altar, that temple.

But your favorite person. When it's your perfect reflection that's been hurting you, squeezing your heart shut, it hits you different.
You were there through imperfections and you get abandoned so perfectly, it's perfect. Standing right next to this smashed-looking glass, you stand there with imperfections, and on the other side of that smooth surface, the other side is so perfectly oblivious it's perfect.

Something is amiss, really, there was. Until I caught that. We both operate with addled brains, and there is something fundamentally wrong with us, we were right about that. Neither one of us is sane, but when together we were quite normal, and apart, we are insane thinking the other is normal, that's the insanity here.

This? You want me to keep all of this alive? What's the point of this pointlessness? I thought through you I knew you and myself. I know you, I thought you knew that. You are gone now. You went so far away. I'm going even farther away from you, farther and farther away from this broken truth. You are so beautiful. But why keep that alive?

Furthermore, there is no further we can go from here. What are we, you and I, we are what we have always been. What we are now, we are peopleless people living different sorts of lives, we are the ones who are not here now is who we are now.

Outside of us, of our own selves, we are out of time, outside of this, we both saw the wider world out there, together but alone, without each other. Though we live temporary lives outside our own world, the world between us is anything but temporary. Though it was only that just that.

We gave up so much to feel something we weren't feeling but what we have been feeling the feeling we had, we’ll never give that up. We had given up so much of our world to feel newer things, to experience new feelings, both at the same time, we had given up so much to feel more, of us.

What we had between us was more than a feeling, it was a universe that was grateful, a grateful universe, that was gratefully just ours.
See, for the past couple of months, I like thinking about you, you see all the places I saw, and you are seeing, those places are not the ones that are pretty. I just cannot be the one who keeps hurting you. I destroyed my own heart so I wouldn't ruin myself for you. Forget you? I’ll keep on feeling that forever.
I'll keep what we have. If she's going to be a bricklayer of my ascent, then I must let her be. But I'll carry inside what we made of my room always with me. I’ll carry her inside me forever.

Do you hear that? Are you still listening to the song from September? That September is more beautiful than the beautiful one. Just. Can I ask one thing? One last thing before you go; one last time before I go. Why stay for those who left and not for the one who stayed?

One more time before we leave, please, please don't ask me to be real and desposses myself of you. I will do no such thing. I'll never let go and leave.

It's ok. It's ok. All this silence, golden, it's ok. You are Okay. It's going to be ok.

Not necessarily so. Certainly, it's not true. But I have been feeling quite dethroned, a pit of my own making, what of it. Turning slightly sideways, I can't help but look at it. At the whiteness of the white tub. Even though the never not so innocuous things we didn't do in our tub, my tub looks so innocent right now in the haze of absence. Even without any spare mermaids to drown that very tub, very white looks so empty. Sans all those mermaids, my tub looks so lonely, without the music of their screeching, what is there to listen to?

I get it now, what this book The Comet Seekers is about, and my understanding is as loud as your gasp of realization was of something I shouldn't have realized for I have only made a mess of things. Now look at this misshapen mess, how to get down and out of this mesa of peaked things. Look at all this beautiful blood and spilled ink. But I get it now, I understand what Comet Seekers is about.

Even before we had stood facing each other in the mossy dell in the forest amongst my favorite woods. I understood. Even before standing there slowly and gently removing the book jacket together, of the Comet Seekers, I understood. It wasn't about us seeking comets, no of course not, nor it’s about comets seeking us.

There is only a ghost of a reason between us separating us in our world. We are still standing before one another. Standing so close to this Comet, I know I'm only seeking you. I'm seeing you again. I see you. We’ll meet again soon? Looking at this Comet, I know, I'm coming to you. We only want mass extinction of ourselves. We are only interested in mutually reassured destruction.

I am not what you are doing to me. What you have been saying is not enough. If you want me to what? Leave you? Move on? Forget you? Then you are going to have to kill me. Because I'll never stop loving you. I'll never give you up. And I keep reading books that are not about us, not exactly, I keep finding them. And again and again, I keep coming across characters in those books who are not really us but shadows of us that won't stop chasing us until at last we find ourselves and each other again.

I have been writing, I have always been writing, what I have written, I have been writing way long before I ever met you, or knew you or even knew of you, you were you but I didn't know you. Do I know you now? I don't know. But I am writing, I know that. More so in your absence than in your presence, I am writing again. But in the past, I have lost words before, I lost words, I have lost entire worlds, I have lost you many times before, I lost words first, then I found them again albeit very slowly, then I lost both my words and you together. Now I have my words again. The only joy I get from life, my pathway to happiness I'd give them up to have you in my life again. My words or you? What to abandon? The choice is mine. So I would rather not. I rather not. I'll tell you this much though. All my words, everything I have written, wrote, or will write have led me to you. Where are you leading me now though?

It didn't happen suddenly, nor all of a sudden. This wreck of my mind. I have tried to overcome this addiction to that candy. I did. My best. Because you were my best. I know I'm not right. But I'm not wrong here either. Sometimes, I just wish. You liked me the way
I like you now.

All those decades burned away from us, and I couldn't escape the feeling that you have always loved me more than I loved you. But now I know you know I love you more than I have loved anything else. Why? You are still asking. You have made everything else real for me, and all my fantasies ensuing or otherwise ceased to be just my own. The world outside my head was just as beautiful as the inside was. I wouldn't have known this otherwise.
Even now, when I couldn't possibly love you more, even when I love you more than you love me, even so I feel you still love me more than I love you. It's in the action of your words, your perennial kindness, and the sway of your hips.

It's me, I'm the problem I know. I wish I knew how to love another person as well. I wish I knew how to love someone else now.

Listen. I love you. Listen. Do you hear that? I love you. Do you hear that crack? I love you. I know you love me too. I know you do. I love you. I'm telling you all that now in lieu of a farewell. I don't know how to say goodbye to you. It's you. How do I say goodbye to you? Everyone left me and I forgot them. I can't forget you because you never did. Leave me.

I love you so much.

But now we have lost each other over the absolute nothingness of nothing. I'm going to miss you, but you are going to miss me more. I’m still here. But you are gone. Now I'm gone, too. All I'm left with is That Feeling and I'm poorer for it

Yet in the brokenness of someone's heart, I know I'll see you again.

I just need to stop seeing you in my dreams first.

And
And

I'll look for you in fiction from now on. I keep finding you there anyway. And, and I'm there too.

Maybe in fiction, we'll do this right. That's the fantasy.

.....and we should have stayed there in the maze. Who was going to catch us? The ancient thing chasing us had already caught us. It had killed us, remember? Tore us apart whilst tearing us limb from limb, don't you remember? It's hardly something you forget. But you had forgotten so much more than just to stay alive for us. We fought, but in the end, we were snared, so we lost. It was fair.

Under the complicit moon, whimsical and wistful, in its lust to join in the slaughter, to be a part of the supple mayhem, that thing had murdered us. Like it's supposed to in the legends of yesterday's yore. Can you blame it, really. No Sigur Rós songs to accompany that act, bloody conspirators they turned out to be. Their bowed guitar betrayed us, laying out the trap that was set for us alone, in the spillage of that lonely April day that was actually night.

It did kill us, the animal was wild and territorial. It killed us but we were feral too. Together we defeated it. We were together that was its defeat. In our togetherness, you and I, we haunt him now in his dreams. We hunt him there. We should have made that garden our home. Where we could slip each other one another one's nightmares. The lovely nightmares we used to share. No one could shame us for that, at least, not now. But who is the ghost now? Oh the greenness of the dead garden is so beautiful.

But we didn't stay there, did we? That is the sadness of our ending. But our happiness mustn't make us so unhappy now. Look, at the end of that tunnel, both the White Rabbit and Alice are standing there. Why are they staring at us like that?

Sure, ere we were alive. But still, how can we ever get back there, when we were never here to begin with? Do cheer up, all those warrens are still waiting for us. Well, for me at least. You can stay.

No matter what or where our murderer is absent there.

non-billet-doux

2016 April.

Hello. How are you? How are you doing? How's everything at your end? I hope you are well. I am doing pretty good as well, keeping busy, trying to be at least, feigning happiness where I can. While I am happy to hope these days, only awaiting your return. Yesss, I am sulking these days, in a funk, but you know I can’t stop telling you what’s going on in my life. Something you knew so well, one thing you were familiar with once. So, here you go! My exams are finally over. Yah! I am free as a bird! I am writing to you at the earliest as soon as I could, I swear. I have tried my best like you had advised me to. I really did. I have a good feeling about the outcome this time. I am fixing to get really good grades, I promise. We should always keep our word even if we can’t keep ourselves, no? I am giving Kainat a hand nowadays helping her with the chores like you wanted me to because she is the eldest, shocking, I know, hehe. There I concede her superiority, happy? And okay fine, I am helping out Dad too. Though to be fair, I feel like he is taking advantage of my generous mood. Ha-ha. You will be very happy to see me doing all this when you come back. You are coming back? Aren’t you? I am doing all that I can, so you can come back to me. I am missing you, Mom, so much, so so much. I know I was never, um, I haven't really been very expressive toward you. I never showed how much I loved you. So I thought to let you know even though I am so wroth with you, still I love you the most. Yes, Mom! You are everything to me but I know I can never be good enough to be like you. This is what I’ve wanted to tell you so many times but didn’t. All my life I never had to pray, you were always there I never needed to, and because of you I never looked for a temple. That's why I always turn to you. Mom, can you tell how much pain I am in right now? Even now? Can you still fix it? Make it better. Somehow. Only you can assuage me that I haven’t lost my place in your world. Only you can heal this hollowness inside me. Only you can help me make sense of why I am still here. Just try to finish your work, and come back as soon as you can, please. Here, look at this. I want to share something I recently read; A year has passed since we looked at each other, hasn’t it? A year has passed or a thousand suns have died. Where are you hiding? Why can’t I hide with you? Why you abandoned me like a painting waiting to be perfect?

[This here, there were traces of pentimento effect right there. But she shrugged it off. She had read that passage and liked it well enough. So she wrote it down here right now]

Has it really been a year, I don't know. Reading it reminded me of that. You do know by now, why I am so mad at you? You were never like this before, not ever, were not, ever. You know what I am talking about. Don’t you? Don't you. This is my 23rd letter to you. You haven't replied to any of them. I wrote to you but you didn't reply to even a single one! How can you do that to me? Mom? I wait every weekend for your letter but I guess you have forgotten the way to our home, or perhaps have forgotten me. Respond this time, please, please respond to me. I know the-

And then she had to stop. She had to stop writing, so she stopped writing. It didn't even last a song, this attempt to reach out to her mother. Then she stopped writing altogether, putting her pen aside, pushing the nearly blank pages away from her. Her hands were shaking so badly by then, she had no choice. She couldn't keep them from trembling. She balled up both her fists, shoving them between her knees to get them to stop shaking. The pain wouldn’t let up, she couldn't ease into her song that was making her really sad. She hadn't been able to. She was still hurting, it still hurt so much to think. Though she had exhausted her ink on paper just now. However. She was neither out of ink nor words but her tears wouldn’t let her continue. She couldn’t even see clearly by then. The tears were what they were, it was the deluge that was too much. This stillborn song. This song in her heart was tearing her apart. All she saw on paper was an inkblot mess. She tried so very hard to remain here, to dwell within this music, sharp staves stabbing her brutally but to no avail. It was useless, all this love for others, she was tired, it was so useless to feel this much for the otherness of others. It was hurting this much to feel. What does it matter? It didn’t matter, by that point it was all moot. Her stupid hand wouldn’t stop shaking. So she stopped.

What could she even write by then? She didn't even have stolen words to go along with. Put them to paper. So. Finally. She folded her unwritten letter, gently putting it in an envelope. She sealed it with her kiss. Hello, Ammi, she thought suddenly, wildly, wholly, whorls of words fluttering out of her. Where are you? She was telling now, not showing but she didn't care. Ammi, where are you? She thought, thinking maybe her thoughts might be able to find her mother, unbidden and free. Looking around she thought, look, Mom, look at me now; traveling back in time. I am time traveling through time without time out of time this time. I wonder, she thought to herself, how you are really doing? How are you really? She couldn’t really ask who are you really, without being derivative, so she didn’t. But where she could ask, so she did, she asked her mother where she was. Thinking maybe her paperless thought would reach her mother where her letter couldn't. She didn't want to sigh but did anyway. Fisting and not fisting her hands weren't helping either. So she clenched and unclenched her fists. And then forgetting her hands altogether she stood up walking away from her desk.

She left her frayed desk behind in the dingy hallway, frail feet moving on upwards almost of their own accord. False sunlight following her up the stairs, weakly trailing behind her, echoing her footfalls. Sunlight, yes, sure, but drenched in sunlight something else followed her upstairs as well. She went past her black cats eating their lunch, faces in the cracked bowls, black boiled eggs spilling over the rims. Her cats were stuffing their faces with the spoiled dinner. The black cats and their human stared at one another for a second but for naught. Wasted vittles, she shook her head sadly but not really sad. Shaking her head, she moved on. But not before turning back toward them again; for in another lifetime she had owned them. When she was looking at her cats, she saw it. She found the cats, black in nature, to be staring at her. So, she hissed at them, bouncing on her feet a little, jumping a little bit. The cats didn't hiss back. So she actually moved on in actuality.

Up, up, up she went. She went upstairs. Breathlessly winding up the spiral staircase, up the crumbling staircase, paint chipping off. Remnants of old wealth and vestiges of extreme poverty struggling to share a single space. Delicious viands, she nodded licking her lips. Not long before, soon enough she was standing before a closed wooden door. Old and worn out. Faded blue color vanishing, though it wasn't the color blue that was being extinguished.

Luckily, the said door was closed but not barred. And soon enough, too soon, she found herself in the upstairs dining room that had seen happier days. She found him sitting by himself at the table. She found him easily enough in the darkened room all alone. He was nursing a coffee he didn't compose. The only thing missing was the stripped tree. She looked around the dining area, where was everyone sans one? She didn't care. She approached the darkness within the darkness that was swelling within the dim room. She gently tapped his shoulder. He detached himself from his own darkness long enough to turn toward her, giving her his full attention, all of it. When he turned to her, she was startled for a moment, taken aback, for a spilt second, she didn't recognize the person sitting before her. Then she handed her brother the envelope she was clutching ever so tightly to her chest. Thus giving it to him, the letter humming quietly within, sealed along with her only kiss.

Her brother hesitated for a moment, before taking the envelope from her. But then he took it.

Mishal handed her handwritten letter to her older brother, knowing he would post it like he always does. Who in her better days she viewed as her constant companion. But in actuality was mostly her pale shadow, just as she was his passenger but darker. She looked at him, struggling to say something. Grappling with her slicked thoughts, she wanted to implore him. But she couldn't get the words out. She didn’t know what to say. Actually, that’s not true, she did know, she didn’t know how to say it. She was looking at him. Rameez, she thought. She wanted to say something. Can you do me this favor? Again? Post this letter to Mom, for me. She wanted her mother to get it as soon as she could. Please, she thought she might have spoken this aloud but she was so quiet inside her head, she was probably just thinking that. She needed their mother to get this letter so badly, so very much. She wanted to tell him that. She needed to. She wanted to say something, something else too. But she didn't. She didn't say anything at all. She didn't tell him a single thing. She left everything unsaid and kept all the things to herself. When she looked at him, he was looking away from her. And when he was looking at her, her head was turned away from him. He would look at her and she would look at him, but their glances never met. But then. She was looking at him. More than that. More than her. He was looking at her too. She was on the verge of saying something, to speak up, she half cleared her young throat, one forefinger even raised. He was still looking at her. When she looked at him again. She didn't say anything. She forgot to speak up, she forgot to speak, she didn’t speak at all. Instead, she handed him her letter, hand-written but fragile, handing it over to him with a smile that made her pretty.

Her last song was at an end, it was almost finished.

Without singing it

- For she had swallowed enough sunlight, she thought, reflecting on the smooth surface of this benighted mirror, because I have swallowed enough sunlight, I think, She thought to herself, off to see my desolate garden, bare, barren, and blighted. It was time for her to do a little bit of plein painting in plein out in the open since she was out in the open now. She smiled her leaf-curled smile. Where’re my mullioned windows at? For she had to get out of there. She was shivering and the floor was so cold. She had to leave, she was barefoot in reality. It was funny though she wasn't laughing. For when it's an absurd comedy then it's a tragedy, when an absurd comedy becomes a tragedy. Or is it tragically comical when it's this absurd? When a tragedy is basically a comedy? Or is it so absurdly comical to be this tragic? Because once you get to know a thing, it's hard to go back to it. There's no going back. When things change things are changed, and they do change things. And she now knew that love of all kinds is never unconditional. It needn't ought to be. How do you get back to that? So she didn't. It's not the fault of the monsters when you try to love them. It is after all time to move on when all the ghosts around you are stagnant. Bowls were cracked and empty, words missing. Lord, she was starving but not for their whispers. Surely, it wasn't her fault if a monster fell in love with her at midnight, for sure. Winter was a starveling little thing now, such a funny little boy, she knew this for she was fully tragic but she wasn't a full tragedy just yet. Though she wasn't trapped here this was starting to feel a lot like a painting -

In so many ways what started out so beautifully was so evil now. So she was leaving, she decided. She whirled around then, walking out of the dining area, and going outside. Heading downstairs, she probably went out to the backyard or what passed as a backyard these days. He couldn't tell from where he was sitting. He didn't care enough to get up to check. But he watched her leave, he did do that, watch her leave that is. Even as he was looking at her walking away, he was becoming uncomfortable, increasingly so. He waited a moment after she was gone. Then flipping over the envelope, he turned it around in his hands.

He held it aloft, holding it in front of his face, thumbing the flap that was coming a little bit unsealed. It was opening up, peeling around the corners, that’s not enough it never is, too much spit. He held it at an angle, looking at it, trying to actually see. Then he just gave up. He sniffed his sister's latest letter quickly. Reeling back, he reeled back even quicker. The letter reeked of her stale breath. He leaned back, sighing. It wasn't long before he got up as well. It wasn't too long before he had to get up anyway, so he did. Now that she was gone, he got up to fetch the damn thing. He got the old shoebox from an alcove hidden somewhere in the room, just outside of this story. He settled back down again at the table, gently removing the lid, pulling out the contents. Contents not contains. He was staring at what was in his hands, what he was actually holding. All the loving memories choked him as he put those aside to pick up the envelope she had just given him, flipping it over once more. Someone other than his imagination was playing a trick on his mind. A trick of memory. He was lonely. But his mind was not the only one trick pony in town. He shook his head, feeling immensely sad, but not really being able to shake off that sadness.

All the things left unsaid, to each other, things that cannot be spoken of, to one another. Everything between everything. And all the things in between that everybody was all too eager and happy to ignore. All the things that cannot be unsaid. It wasn't there. All the black mass amassing within these walls.

Nostalgia almost suffocated him. For what was no longer there was still there. Almost. But something other than nostalgia was most definitely choking him. Something tangible. Something outside of himself. He felt its hoary presence, a physical force standing behind his chair, choking him, and he let it. Come on, you haar, throttle me, he thought. But then like most things in his life, its interest in him fizzled out, all its strength petering out, and all the space that it was occupying leaked out of the frame, seeping into him. Thus becoming just another entity that was abandoning him too. That abandoned him. As well, just as well. Oh, how disappointing, he thought to himself, more amused than bitter. And just like that, the presence that was almost purple, foreign and alien, that was trying to haunt him was gone. Just like that. But it wasn't replaced by anything else that would haunt him in turn. In its place was something that never left him that would never stop haunting him. It was all spurred by tragedy in real time, sure, but it had an added burden of being real. So, it will never stop hurting him and he will never stop fighting it. But the presence itself was no longer there. Texture of it was like the heavy space all the missed opportunities occupy, that hollowness you feel when you finally stop feeling for the love that’s unrequited. And much like that even the space surrounding that was gone. He supposed he was a bit annoyed because for a little while he had forgotten that the malice was real. It wasn't a long hard goodbye but he did mourn his loss. He mourned the loss of an absence for a bit, and without paying the loss of that absence with a presence, he moved on. But he did move on, moved on he did.

He didn't put forth anything. But moving forward, he went on, went forth. And he picked up what he had pulled out of the old shoebox, pulling out the remaining twenty-two letters his sister had given him. All the other previous twenty-two letters he was supposed to post, the ones he had supposedly already posted. All those letters composed over the course of a year. He has been looking at all the unsealed envelopes. Now he looked at the one written in March, opening it as well. But just like the others, he didn't read that one either. He didn't need to. All those letters written in a year, what a crumpled year it was. Then he added the latest one to the pile, bringing the total to twenty-three. Twenty-three letters. All these opened, unsealed envelopes, flaps tore open hanging out like papery hangnails. He resisted the urge to shuffle them, why tempt something that wasn't there? He adjusted the envelopes, straightening them, and smoothing out the edges. Running his fingers over them, he ran his hand over the envelopes, ruffling the stillness of the envelopes, he ruffled the papers.

He had gathered all the envelopes into a stack and he tapped that stack on the dusty dining table just once, before putting them back in the shoebox.

His work done for another night, and he was suddenly very tired of it all. Leaning back, he couldn't help but wonder about his sister, dwell on that thought, so he wondered. He leaned back, wondering about his sister, thinking whether she'll ever make it. If she'll ever make it out of this misshapen mesa that is their life now after the aftermath of before days. What killed him was knowing her failure was killing him, he was aware that wasn't what was supposed to kill him. He had a lot to give but none to take and there lies the main issue. The Failure of Her was too huge to get past and he couldn’t look past it. The failure of her focus on an altar of their passing was dangerous, not only that, it was enormous, a calamity. He was already dwelling on so many of her little shortcomings way too much. She wasn’t fulfilled enough to be fully bright, so she had to renege on that. What a waste, it was such a waste to watch her waste away like this. She was so full of promise back then. She was once a promising young woman. What happened? What was left of all that, she was just a young woman now, which was all that remained of that notion; she was the only thing left of that sorry equation. She was all that was left of her entire potential. It's such a shame, she had squandered her gift for posterity and for what? What had happened, to her? He wasn't in a foundry right now but he found himself not being able to let this go. He had already done so, but he was still mulling over it. He was still trying to understand the failure of her imagination, utter and abject. He was trying to grapple with that. He tried grasping her harvested status of a non-starter, he really did. But he was still trying to come to terms with her loss. She has lost herself. That she had lost was undeniable. What she had lost wasn't lost on her. He understood what was wrong; it's always the other people who are currently living your dream, who enjoy your dreams while you are the one who's asleep. And he didn't know what to do with that. How do you deal with a loss like that? She has lost everything inside her that was her. He didn't know how to reconcile with that. He was no longer sure how to love her anymore. He wanted to sympathize with her but found that he didn't. He had been thinking about what she was wearing today, he remember looking at her dress, glancing at the threadbare hem of her kurta, and thinking what does she do all day? He knew in reality everyone has the right to look through the past and chew on the good parts only but most rarely do that, if ever. But how do you unknow someone? Knowing a person is so brutal. He also knew if you kill something that's already dead then it's not murder. That's not what was so saddening here. He knew in his hearts of heart that she wouldn't be coming full circle. Hers was not a cyclical story. Because it has been so hard watching her creativity sap away like that. It's so maddening! Though he had been enjoying the early days of the sprig of spring that is this season, he couldn't help remembering, he couldn't help but remember, he kind of enjoyed that too, It's just that when all you have is memories, brittle and full, it becomes a burden, it's so burdensome, such a heavy load, especially when you are the only one carrying that. Ah, to be suddenly without the ability to make memories, what a pleasure, such joy, what a wonderful thing that would be. Still, parts of him grew up, and some parts of him flew away. Still, he remained himself. Still, he couldn't help but wish all of his best for his sister, hoping she'll get through whatever is it that she is going through. One way or another. He hoped. To be able to find Alice in April. In the garden. What a goodbye that would have been, a fitting farewell. And remember, a writer's farewell is never a goodbye. If only he was a writer. She must have slept by now. She's probably sleeping in her bed. Dreaming. But who is it that's waking her up from her dream right now? He wondered just who was it that really woke her up.

He glanced at his mug, wishing it still had coffee. His hand almost reaching out, he snatched it back, seeing that the mug was empty. He had drunk it all. An empty cup was saddening, it was making him sad. What had happened? His cup was full, once upon a time, full to the brim, now it was brimming with nothing else. Alas, though he had gathered all the envelopes, he had utterly failed to gather the rest of the storms. What happened to the stars, they are all dried out now, where once not so long ago they were wet, so very wet. Did they die out waiting for Anne Boleyn to be executed? Sooner or later, we must all climb down the stone towers ourselves. He wanted to toss something on the table. But there was nothing to fling down. His hands were bare. Out of tune, the music was almost over.
He sprung suddenly, leaning forward on the table forcefully, chuckling hard. Apropos. He proceeded to spare her one last thought, a final word, amused with her small world and her little life. He was shaking his head with bleak merriment, mired with mirthless laughter that was sputtering out of him, You’ve swallowed enough sunlight. Put down the dirty Mason jar, you little waif. That's not honey in it. Stale, stolid, spoiled, it doesn't have any liquid in it. Put it down. It's not the water that's stagnant. "Go on," Rameez thought, "Go on you little time traveler. Go be useless in music, go be less." For when the song ends, life goes on. And when that life ends, the song remains. But he shouldn't have bothered, he needn't waste his breath. His sister had already become the perfect apposite of what was not there anymore. She was a goner. "We are still occurring between the stars." He muttered.

And without permeable, he got up from the dining table, grabbing the shoebox. Tucking it under his arm, he walked out. The natural light was almost gone when he realized something. It occurred to him that he was almost native here. And then he too naturally disappeared.

Unwritten by FDK. April 2016.
Retold March 2023.

iZombie had no right to be as good as it was. The series had no right being as fantastic it really was. Now I am wondering about the comic books.

Subterfuge he wasn’t sure about
but he couldn’t see
of that
of monsters and men
he was sure of

He cannot see the colors now
anymore
he has lost them all

Every little thing is dull, hull cracked and leaking filling us up, all the remaining colors are drab now

He can't touch them anymore, this light false and real, he can't swallow it now, what he is rubbing between the index finger and his thumb, it's not colors, what is it, fossils do not lie

It is so chilled now, this dying star, he is, die a little faster now
sun and its numinous reach, ruinous now, each and every finger, freezing
frozen in nothingness, into nothing

Falling on the olden me, that is still not there, straying beside the copacetic copses, this stale sunlight falls on my skin, stirring nothing anew, sunlight falling on me, not stirring the skin

It's so cold now
Apricity is all gone now
Truly
All the sun-dogs are dead

There is fire
There's a fire
But no heat

Son, even the sun, doesn't feel its own warmth
hanging in this abeyance, deliriously, deliciously,
in a moment of her
in this absence
the sun cannot warm himself
the library is closed
all the words
written and forgotten
nothing is forbidden
still nothing there is that I need

The last time I did this
With
Her moribund lips
It was still winter
Winter sun has finally died

But even in all this madness, I know this is March

It's not about dying, but being reborn though not born again, never. We are not perishing, but burning together, we are coming back again.

There is still a way out of this misshapen mesa
I hope
there's hope still
Everything is dead but
For

All dead things are about new beginnings
Dead reminds us of fresher starts
Freshening our mouths in Fresno of our minds
Our collective shame not shaming us
There is still a way out of here
All the way
Outta here
So there is a sliver of a chance here
To toil in the soil
In the dirt
And be free
Of earth and joyless earthen delights
For flowers of the dead

And dead flowers have a presence
And weight

That you can feel even underwater
and under the water, you are home
And like, my stranger, who is familiar and my person, favorite, like my familiar stranger, who is strangely familiar and familiarly strange, of strange beauty, said, trick or treat whilst hiding behind her smile, burrowing inside her borrowed lie.
But

It is just like how the girl with the glass feet told me, it’s not about the sun, or the sun dying in the winter. It's not about death at all. It's about the dearth of words. It's about words. So find some of them, please, animate some of this. Inanimate objects await us. So write. Feel.

So that's where we are in the spectacular of now here in March

But February? That was another story. What was it about? The last month of February was snowy and moony. This February had its Snow Moon. Where it was cold, not cold enough. Under the pewter skies, the moonbeams were cool and balmy, soothing, the moonlight calming me down and down for everything.

Month of February. What was it? I'll tell you.
February was about mermaids
Trying to find them
Keeping them
In the tub
Filleting them
Blinding them
Denying them
Making them up
In their own heads

Resting in wombs, revoke them
February was about burying the hatchet
Into broken skulls
even more so
it was for

Burying the songs
- the dunes cold
In the sands
- the sandworts colder still

While all the remaining lies remain the same.
The thing is, here’s the thing
Here I am for another story
looking for it
I am here for it

A Story.

Before the evenfall had made its claims and had its wanton ways. Even before the evening had set the tone before the fickle moon had wept away the mood. Even before night had teased the bruises from the day; even before all the colors in your world lost their shyness.

Even before the specks of drunken stars could spill their secrets all that wasn’t theirs to give. Even before the night could fall properly and bestow its veil of freedom, I was seeking you out. Though you weren’t hiding from me.

Far from it.

I sought you out in the middle of the middle of that darkened corridor. The hallway leading up to your rabbit-hole from whence you came and where you were lingering right now safe and secure in your make-believe holdfast, right there, your stone citadel where you dole out your own feminine generosity generously.

Where you dithered and waited, sodden so so sodden with your own thoughts. Your thoughts smiling back at you. But you weren’t looking.

Hitherto, you have only loved me in the fever of my dreams, in fever dreams, where we copulated the nightmares we happened to share, where we exchanged the sins of our past. I sought you out while stuck in the middle of your mess, a murky midden although silken in nature, where squelching through the morass I saw you coming for me. I tried to run toward you, I tried running away, but I couldn’t move.

You were coming to me. I was looking for you, seeking you out with an ache of a thousand suns that were dying. What’s more beautiful than the death of a star? What’s more satisfying than the utter destruction of something you love.

I didn’t stalk you here, wherever this here is, nor did I stumble upon you. But rather you were opening up before me like a single piece of offering lying supine on a wooden altar placed neatly in a dell encircled by dark swaying trees, solely for my false awakening.

A single raven which is a singular thought flitted across the stodgy sky blotting out the burning sun; the rook glistened with madness, cawing away its assent madly maddened by the blatant display of mutual want. All madness. Everything was. Is.

The flute of your flesh wrung out trilling notes, the warble of your skin jerked me forward misleading me ever so gloriously to your door. The hues of your breaths finally led me here to stand before this frayed door. I shook my head. It wasn’t the allure of sucking and licking and being sucked or licked in return of auroras by you in a delighted give and take that had pulled me to this bathroom door.

It was and always will be. Your scent. The promise of your smell lured me here. It had brought me face to face with you and you without a face but you somehow still have your lips, full, filthy and real.

I twist the knob, feeling something wring inside your chest making you breathless. Even at the threshold I clearly felt that. Pushing the door inward, walking inside I decided to cash in your raincheck, believing against everything in spite of the Evidence of Marilyn Mason, needing you to make good on your unkept promise. I went through yet another filigreed door for you. Just for you, I came here. I came for you. Would you do the same? Come for me? To me? I had come looking for all your sounds, but I’ll stay for your songs, at least one of them I can do. Damndest things they are. They damn you more than me. I have come undone looking for you. But I will make you come undone too. Promises to discard. Scents to be eaten, much too much to be eaten.

I leave the door slightly ajar behind me, not caring if everyone else watches; let them bear witness to all things strange and aqueous. I’ll give the shadows of Others something to feast their eyes on. I’ll burn their fucking eyes out.

You in all of you didn’t even stir when I enter into your flowery abode; a floweret hell of your own doing, but you will more than stir when I will enter again and none too gentle an entry that will be. I promise. Looking for an introitus to your molten soul, I will enter your soul, melt the damn thing and then will imbibe your chi, drink it slowly and enjoy you fade away. You don’t look up from what you are doing, too busy unwrapping everything inside your weary head whilst the universe is busy unwrapping you; turning you round and round, unrolling you from your purple cocoon until you come out of it like a butterfly from its chrysalis, but wait- you are a moth and a broken one at that. A mass of satin and broken white skin.

Though I must allow that you look at ease within your surroundings, resplendent even in your belated authority, shimmering with a chilled ole power of yore, of some forgotten folklore. I see that you have converted my bathroom into a dwelling of your own, what was mine is yours now, the stamp of your approval and permanence is everywhere on every nook and cranny just as it is on my heart. The gray tiles, the heated floor in the process of being trodden by your feet look like sluggish gray bricks of your keep. All this gay grayness is a kingdom of Nightlands and it looks like you are its undisputed Queen. But am I your king? Or am I a King reigning over nothing as you stand under the rain of nothing.

Ah, there you are standing under the shower, palm up one hand resting on the tiles, another one is in your hair like you have quite forgotten your own existence, your eyes are screwed shut tight yet you are breathing solidly under the falling water. You are utterly disrobed from reality, all your fears nicked off; your personal arrears dealt with paid in full, every account settled with, all misgivings sorted out. Denuded of your burden; you are beautiful in your emptiness. Therefore, I find you like this standing there confident and content, as naked as when your thoughts were born, not even wearing a sheer shift of caution now. You stand under the stream, professing an ancient pleasure, trembling with it rather. That very pleasure almost in my face is so cruel in its attainability. Taunting me with its simplicity, with the pure logic of it.

The basic equation of it is as haunting as your memory. A pity I can’t slice off this blade of memory and make it fall like all the flowers I felled for you. For the blade of memory has a very sharp edge. Funny thing, this blade has a habit of becoming very dull when it’s used for gouging out the thumping errant heart, thus leaving that whole treat rather a clumsy endeavor. The funnier thing though, it livens up when using it to sever anything familiar.
The pitter-patter of the running water, the steam hanging in the air like stillborn emotions, the tiny wet droplets in odd places is the scene I am beholding now almost unwittingly, smeared in all the wrong places the gleaming beads do have a rather bate look to them. But I am looking at you, that’s all I can do, what I am wont to do; under the fizzy cataract of the falling water you are so graceful, so fucking beautiful. I watch you fade in and out of water with the beat of the flow. The water gushing forth from the showerhead engulfs you, completely justifying my jealousy. Your body throbbed with its watery music, the torrential rush that’s spewing forth from the nozzle is a soft summons to a freefall of my own. I find myself moving in your direction despite what the small gods of smaller yesterday had planned for us. My feet moving for you and your hitched breathing reeling me in making me move toward the open and unlocked shower-box.

Heading toward my own sunset that was dripping with honey, I can only nurture my hope and entertain the only folly that you want me in all my entirety, the sum total that is me. I strut on to where you are almost waiting for me. Drenched in golden vulnerability, you look palatable in your possibilities. It is no longer a sin to want you; it is quite a sin now to deny you. I step inside your inner fold, a dell of your own. Leaning past you to turn off the shower, I catch the spray from the dwindling stream, my face shone with it as I lean back past you again in this wet dance. My only gripe in all of this is that my visage isn’t boasting your spittle.

You don’t move nor make a sound in all this. Then I take you by your wrist, your eyes remain closed yet your mind, oh boy your beautiful mind dipped in spiced imaginations, is wide open and is opening wide still. Head lowered you let me lead you out of the shower-box your long hair trailing after you like an afterthought of the rain. We wade through the smallest of puddles as one, hoping and yearning to make a bigger puddle of our own outside of here, stepping out of the shower-box and out into the constricted openness of the bathroom. Mid-step on an empty whim I twirled you around like we are still dancing from our first night on the roof though we are not under the stars this time around, your damp tangled hair clinging to you offered some resistance to the motions, sprinkling droplets everywhere and some even splashed on my face. I glance up and really wish the surfeit of condensation smoldering on the ceiling is my spire of constellation but it’s just the smudge of this moment unfolding in all its starkness as this snug moment unfolds.

Heaving slightly, dripping profusely, you stand in a corner with a suggestion of a smile tugging the corner of your mouth, an inkling of happiness in your smile plays havoc with my imaginations. Your smile echoes around the gray tiles, rattling around the closed space really resounding within the already pliant bathroom. That smile echoes on and on no longer being stymied by our not so distant future or improper distance. Your smile is not corrupting my momentum, my dream, my prayer, my request to have you in every which way a man can have his woman, nor its glow belittling the exigency that is my need to take you in this unsolicited moment. Ah…Oh! There you are making your last stand against the last of your qualms, looking like a newly turned untamed soil all ready to be plowed thoroughly, everything that your presence elicits in me is unfiltered and unadulterated.

You look like what you really are; not unwanted manna from the heavens. As if you know, the love you have for me won’t be held against you yet somehow you still managed to look like an unspoiled dream that is yet to be burned. All this foreshadowing is equally proportional to the imminence of us, mostly because all my previous denials of you didn’t shatter you.

As I watch you stand before me, I have a small smile of my own. I have been so worried that you have had started the festivities without me. But I have a very comforting feeling that all kinds of juices are about to flow, creative, and fun ones, too. But unfortunately, we are at an impasse, for the siege of your heart is my solace . If I let it, it can be my salvation; it can repair me and I shall fix myself. No matter how much damage it does you is no concern of mine. That’s just too bad, for who the fuck told you to act like a savior anyway? You can save me to be sure, but who will save you? I am not your echo. Why are you mine?

Your head hangs very low, your eyes remain downcast. You continue to flicker before me like a misty smoggy wet apparition. I love saying the word wet around you, you bring a special meaning to it because your wetness is sincere unlike other women I met across the plane of my shame.

You are standing before me breathing in plain sight, but you deign not to cover your breasts. You didn’t fold your arms across your chest to block the fallow view, and what a view it is, what ample bliss they are. Nor do you move to cover your cunt with a swipe of your hands. You trust me with your bare mind alone have me more atremble and more ashiver quickening my already agog pulse than your whole naked acceptance of me.

I start to reach down there, to truly relish it, to have the wisps of your warmth curl around my fingers. My hand swiftly moves toward what belongs to you but is mine to enjoy. I move to touch that, my two curved fingers almost reaching that fiery pit already bitterly cold with hard earned anticipation. I move my hand down there and you skirts back then leans forward again tipping into me, your eyes still closed, playful smile flashing across your face. Your movements correlated with mine, our footwork beguiling our anxiety. My fingers linger down there feeling the heat of your designs emanating from your mold, the breath of your future rising from there was so clear on my fingers, just awaiting my seed. The need to feed you my fingers was intense, almost like twitch of an addict and yet I was your addiction. My fingers didn’t touch it yet I sense your cunt dribble, swelling and quelling at my imagined touch thickening me further, bloating my already urgent avarice for you.

As if the carapace of my desire needs to be any more firm. I am already hard for you as you are wet for me and it is as redundant as it sounds. After all a cunt is where every story begins and where every good story should end. My hand danced near your firepit, I flex my fingers like about to perform tricks like a seasoned legerdemain and coax out something elegiacal from your honeyed insides. My hand wobbles near your ever constricting, ever salivating cunt. I feel if I push in now a special mist will come out of it especially for me.

I pull back while you continue to hover before my existence. I withdraw, forfeiting this particular sweet feel for the moment, just for now all right. Why? Well, we have all the time in these moonless days, our wolf going nowhere and certainly not dying, only howling for one another. Instead I decide to draw you into this game and make you a participant as well as an observer.

I push your up chin, titling back your head, your tangled tresses making squishy sounds; therefore, I render you a player in your own elated decadence.

Gently, gentler than the sun leaving the moon and the moon swaying the sea and the wheat whispering back, I kiss your eyelids to make you open your eyes.

It’s not that you have been shy exactly. It’s just that you have been rather a doormat whilst I have been building this word by word, brick by brick. But now I feel that if you don’t contribute to it, this whole thing would end up being a cairn made up of our bones and that will be terribly anticlimactic, no? We wouldn’t want that. We want an absolution. Because, well, mostly because you merely existing is no longer sufficient contribution. No, let’s be generous and say you have been lazy, wanting the pleasure without the pleasure of working for it. However I am here to tell you in all of you, that you are enraged now; a storm trapped inside you and you trapped in a bell jar with that brewing storm within you just ticking away.

At the rumor of my touch that is the press of my lips to your petal eyelids, your eyes flutter open. And you look at me. Observe OK, so participate now. As your first act as a sovereign, you undress me with your awakened gaze. You look right at me, right through me, to see all of me. You look right down to my core, flaring up the thousand dying suns stroking me without laying a single svelte finger on me while engorging me and raising my gorge for your softness. You have been placid and a bit off but now, oh oh now you look like you are ready to cuddle with a tiger, or maybe you are a tiger and you want me to cuddle with you. You looking at me, stroking me is further emboldening my need for you.

Then you chose to give me tinniest of nods as if your permission means anything now, like it matters by now. You make your move, flipping the game upside down, chucking away the norm, the expected, the safe, and kiss both sides of my face, but you fall short, so very short, of kissing my mouth, separating me to make that final gesture to seal both our bodies together, we were already fillips of each other’s faith. But to bring our faces together and the kissing of the mouths you leave that to me. To kiss your mouth. That is my pleasure, my right your gift to me, and my curse. To kiss you my only job, the sole occupation of my mind- and you moaning my name my only payment. I know how to kiss and you know how to moan, all the songs our lips together will bring out, songs pure enough to move the sea to tears and it will cry its own ocean at the unattainable simplicity of us. Or is the sea bemoaning the finality of us?

You kiss my cheek and your voice explodes somewhere behind me.

We can, yes. We may.

I don’t care if she’s that, because she is not that or all that at all. I can’t sleep, this pewter season it’s too much, you know that by now. Good, you know what I am right now, what I am fixing to do here. This isn’t a fever left by a dream. Let us assume you are still where you are, though your claimants are few and far in between now. I can’t seem to wake you up, you can’t be awakened, can’t make you aware. So. We begin with a spoiler and as always, that spoiler is her. Like an inkling of the very first sound ever felt on this earth, the first round shook, the first wave of it, she is there, always. She was the original warhorn when all the demons and all demons wanted was peace. It’s her, always about her, much like this very season gray and dreary. A chilling season and chilled. A seasoned treat, unexpected sure but a treat nonetheless, a must-have viand, if you must and I entreat that you must.

Where is the body, where is the wake? Side by side and awake now, you told me she won’t be doing that, wouldn’t do that, because no true Celt would do that. She is a full-on Gaelic after all, and yet she is doing it. She has always been an informal fallacy, cute but impossible, hard to put into words. But I’ll say this though; to her credit, she did abandon her chase, ceased chasing something white, something small, something furry, something dirtied by all that yellow sunlight of yore, for me and my quiet words. She did, she did really. This lonely winter road, it gets to you, strange that we’ve both been on it. You paved it; I walked it, walked by it, on it and quelled something in her. That was the road and on that road, she swerved ever so prettily. She did. She didn’t disappear nor ended up into a curlicue of her fogs.

Despite the fact, the Winter has come again, in spite of the Snow falling once more. Even for a moment, she wasn’t tempted. Everything stops for a little while. Every stop matters. Every little thing matters, even if everyone does not. Everything stops after a while. You know something, it is rather painful to exist in someone else’s words, all the wrong colors, it just doesn’t work, but for me, it was never too painful to write about her. It was difficult, sure, but not hard. She was no Anne in that regard, extra pinky or not. She didn’t demand any but I gave her plenty and she took aplenty. Words that is. Words galore. Words aglow. We needed no raven then, and no raven wanted to be there. Then and there, now and here. Maybe she was no Marquess of Pembroke or her sublime marionette, but we must take into account that aged sunlight. How different it was there. All that sunlight that was there to touch, mold and meld together into something truly great, something concrete that you touch just like the sunlight. You don’t need anything. Pure, plenty, playful, pliable sunlight in your hands that’s a little less hungry. A perfect ochre color that’s easier to love. Hold it in your hands and pray with and you won’t feel so empty as to want their whispers. Okay, so she is no Anne, but I’ll give her one more chance. One more. For I want to do that more than once.

Even so, why everyone keeps telling me it means something when it clearly does not. She is visible, I can see her still, can’t you agree? That does mean something. As clear as her namesake in the nightly skies, floating up there so openly. I mean, I can step outside my room right now, even here, to look for the moon and it will be there too, it will matter, does it? The fullness of it engendering all sorts of interesting things weirdly cloaked as hope. And no, the cloak sure as hell isn’t red, not this time, not in this story. But then again, if it is not naked then it really isn’t hope, is it? Especially under an open sky. But the moon, you look up at it and it glows right back at you. The sheer enormity of that moon, of its rare smile, threatens all the pleasures of tomorrow. Bloodied that grin is, so is that girl, all her blades were sharp and sharpened. You know what though? Look at the moon, look at it, and feel nothing, feel it. You are nothing. See, even if it is not true, which it likely isn’t for what is really, it is still a good story. For someone like me, that’s something, but for someone like her, it’s not enough. It never was. But me? Hell, am I not a traveling gestour. Listen, hold it against the light, examine it, a few careless gestalts aside, a little hesitant sure but the Story of Her is rather quite engaging. Both of us were enthralled by it, we found it to be assertive, impressive, and oddly enough immersive. Her story had merit, even if she did not. I didn’t find it nauseating as their stories usually are, licked by the salt of memory. It certainly didn’t nauseate you and all of this is on you. Kinda your fault, buddy. What gives, why exert, why all this, won’t you see how wrong you were, how you hurt us, all of us? But will you just look at us, this is us doing different things, apart from wanting different things now. Oh, look the things we do to each other and the things we don’t do enough. How we destroy this plane, this planet that’s not planetary anymore.

Back to her. Always. She didn’t mind she was a terra firma of opportunities, a ground to build all my reasons and also grounds for your absolute dismissal. There wasn’t much common between the two of us, that girl and me, not even an apple or a sly snake except for our shared virgin earth and earthen were our feelings once until the spirits took them away. We were friendly toward one another, affable because of the distance, no bridge needed this time, and gentled by the night. I don’t know what else she did, man, what other maddening things, but we know this; groomed, saddled, and bridled, she rode all the water horses. Once she had all of Loch Oich to herself, all of it she owned. Ceffyl Dŵr, Ceffyl Dŵr, Ceffyl Dŵr, what other wrongs she did commit we keened, what else is she guilty of? Just how exactly is this my fault, what happened is not on me. She was never my creature though she never contested my will nor went against it. She was your sketch from the get-go. You made her an incendiary as you doodled the rest of tomorrow, but you couldn’t inflame her mind, could you. You needn’t poke me in the ribs, oh I know how beautiful she makes us. But why should that matter and this is important, she is not sacred, she is just a girl we shared. She was the only girl we shared really. But she was the kind of person who shared us as much as we shared her. We didn’t use her as much were used by her. We were just once hers, for a while. She spake. She spoke to us in her own tongue; ole and sweet-sounding something like that first wave of that sound, saying gghagg gagh ba ba ba blah blah ga. At least that’s what we heard. We are not complaining. Can you really blame us? Must you? Oh, you must. Then you must understand, you must know this pain. All that’s been written for five thousand years raging inside her head, tell me what castles did she capture? All the monsters couldn’t contain her imagination, and it’s funny because she was the one imagining them. It was her noggin, after all, it was her space they were dwelling in.

It is weird; lately, I have been waking up from dreaming of them, of the monsters and men, of monsters in men. But what about the dreams of the corpses? What is the dream of a corpse? Who is dreaming for them now? The rest of it is easy. It is rather simple, really no more secrets. The only secret being that she is no longer the Secret in the Book of Kells. I’ll grant her that. I’ll give her that much at least. Though she has taken much from me, so much more than that. Despite being under the water all the time and singing for the gods just beneath the shallow sallow surface. She became the book lost to time, in time, and with time. A book, history deliberately swallowed, but since she wasn’t heroic at all, she’s no hero, history didn’t spit her back out. But come on, look at it. And what things you can find between the pages of a book besides the printed words, a painted memory, a scent vaguely familiar familial even, almost lost, a burst of red mist that’s your future and something numinous in its absence. Whatever it is that’s there between the worn-out pages, gold or dirt it crumbles in your hand. It just does. Close your fist. Save it. Cherish it. Eat it. Gobble it. Words. Mine. Like she did.

Remember when she used to be the only sorrow in our life, ah good times and now it’s my own mind. Just as well, she went rogue, and her one and only rebellion are us. Oh, you didn’t know? I thought you had crammed every answer there is.
Me? I am not worried. Not I.
I know how this is played.
If I don’t move, I’ll matter. I know.
I don’t
Still, I don’t matter.

But she says thank you in Cherokee. So she does. Matter. And what does she say in Cree? She’ll wait, she says in Cree. Unlike you, she will wait for me. She misses me, poor little lamb; but she says she misses me in a language only known to her. She whispers things - to whom, the moon or to me, who can tell? She murmurs in a dead language. Why not? She was a linguist of all forgotten things last winter. Knower of dead languages and deader people, she is. But who could tell her the dead know her too? She whispered things in who knows what tongue. Well, you do. You know, either she misspoke or you misheard her and misinterpreted on purpose. But you heard what you wanted to hear and felt validated anyway. I don’t know why you bother peeking at the script when all you have to do is flick your wrist a little bit and a little darkly. You can tweak or even rewrite the whole thing, and just be done with it.

She matters, she concedes that herself. She turns. She hews the mountains in her way. She moves things in her wake and the moon follows her. She sips from yesterday’s rain and all the stars call her their own. She breaks nothing and yet the sea still blames her. The world, hers and mine, this world is ash right now, it is in ashes, it certainly tastes like ash. Still, she wants a second helping of that. She is like that. For her, the anatomy of lie is not in the actual act of lying but in tolerating that lie. She gets that. This world does not. Guess, which one of them is doomed? You guessed wrong.

She is the very last thing that matters to me now. Even though the end is not near and the very Last thing is not her. She is the only real happiness left of yesterday. Of home. From home. For Home. She is the very last link, broken to be sure, but tangible memento left of a dead house that is not haunted by her. I have done that before, taken care of Dead Houses. I have been the gaoler of sadness and it’s all sad now. But hey, if it makes you happy for me to be unhappy then I’ll be happy for you. I’ll wait for you to make up your mind, for the pleasure is in the waiting and the pleasure of her is all mine. It’s not so bad, like past good ole days and older tongues, come on now it’ll be like accepting what is already destined, appreciating the sooth that’s already been sayered and calling it Fate. When the truth being lack of Faith on your part and that’s ironic even without trying. Everything is half measured, except for her; she went all in.

The way I write, the way I write, charcoal of it all, the ink that’s barely there even in your hollows. The way she turns around and the way moon plays us both, partial to the way she flip-flops her mind on all the things, not around her, oodles of things. The subtle way she changes the color of leaves that’s almost sweet but mostly just unsettling, and the trees call her their natural ally, imagine that. Well, even you beyond the wall, sitting across the border can complete the next line of misplaced thought. It goes like this something like this, even when the dragons are imagining her. See, it wasn’t so bad. It was? Well, that’s too bad. To be perfectly honest, dragons don’t really think too much. The burden of thinking too much is the lot of humans. Anxiety eats them and then they are eaten by the dragons. The utter realization of this is such a delicious vittle, all set to be eaten.

I think it’s safe to say all the necessary fourth walls are no longer there, so let’s just do away with all the extra white noise. I know, you rather I wouldn’t think about it, bring it up in any way, or even remember it much. But I am helpless. I can’t help but think about it over and over again.
How you didn’t want me to meet her.
Not really, no.

In the middle of a fresh clearing, I was to meet up with her. In a civil twilight, I met her in the forest. Our shadows fell across each other’s in front of us, blades of grass twinkling, and I fell for her. She had met me halfway across the ground covered with felled pines, smiling at us, well at me she didn’t know you were there too, as she spun a web of false light, closing us on all sides from rest of the world. How you asked, well let me tell you that in a moment. First, we must let the northern lights tune up the band and play, today is Icelandic Music Day after all. Let the northern lights get ready to make a sacrifice. Not sure to whom will they be making their offering, since you are here with me.

She wasn’t quite the time traveler she thought she was. So she couldn’t quite avoid meeting us. To travel through space and time, she needed a key and a primer, she was both. Luckily, we never told her that. It’s rather simple, to slip through time and sift through space, you have to go through memories. I even allowed her to remember some. You have to remember, to remember that, remember that, and she didn’t want to remember, remember? Of course, you do, Mr.Böri. And you mustn’t worry about the moonlight; it’s gone, she ate it all. She truly is the girl who drank the moon; she really is the only one to do so there. All she had to was pick one memory and she couldn’t do, could she? King Kong didn’t have anything on her. Though she always won that game when she played hide and seek with the gentle ape. King Kong could never find her, she was a true haint, the girl who was visible no more, poof gone, the magic of her and he drank away his sorrows. Poor guy. King Kong was never big enough to find her.

But we were talking about you. Listen, for you to have even the slightest chance of getting over this and for any of it to make sense. In order for you to accept this narrative, you and I follow two different narratives and survive your own settings then you must own her too. The funny thing about owning her though, it’s more like trying to conquer the night with the help of blind moths. And that is what I desire for you beyond this sound. You see, I have been dealing with her existence long before I was made aware of yours, I dealt with her likes, mister before forever was forever. It’s all yours, yes but it’s your turn now. You can’t rid of her. Who’s the chattel?

For the longest, while now it hasn’t been about her. She knows that. All her tall trees are silent, numb, muted, hushed, waiting for me to paint her, subtly urging me on despite the fact I clearly don’t want to. I refuse to do that. To paint her now with all the leaves standing witness would be a mistake. It would be akin to trying to see the reflection of a girl who isn’t there anymore. And I don’t want to be on a special qui vive. I want to do more than just talk. Hey now, I don’t need to paint her to make her into a ruinous monster. You did the sketch, remember. How is this my fault again? This is my, you are not holding a mirror. Tell this, why all the monsters you sent were women?

Like I told you as I said, we met her in the quieted dell. But she was unaware I was carrying a passenger- you. You were like the shadowy malice from upstream color lingering just behind me, prickling the nape of my neck. We stood face to face only furlonged by little distance. She and I facing each other, you behind me and around us.

She promptly shut us off from the rest of the ugly world. She was unaware that you were there with me enclosed and hiding behind me. then she allowed me to see and spoke the trees rustled. Her accent had been robbed by the woods but it wasn’t the blue flute and my bruised fingers that had lured us here. It was you. we met in the crimson forest sure the trees silent her speaking I met in the reddened forest that had the ting like it had a bit a heavy juicy plum all the red dribbling but I’ll forget it was the wolves who had brought the two of us me and her, not you and me, together in a peopleless tribe. You couldn’t help it can you, you told the wolves I was home.

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In a short distance, a distance so short that it could easily be seen and believed. And what's there to see other than the mutual past, but worn-out old fishing boats weathered and roughened bobbing in the sea. All the boats bobbed freely frayed only with the music of the olden sea. Faded, weary with use, almost paintless in the brightened gloom, the boats were tottering happily, relaxed for once. Almost chirping away, sated, for now, a little buzzed with what they were doing themselves on the water that's restless by choice, that won't stay still. In short, the boats were merry in the bosom of the old sea. Though something else, something older than the sea, was certainly not merry. Far from it.

But the sea itself, that ole fool that just won't fade, go away, and die? The sea was luminous and greedy in the fresh sunlight, reminding everyone, all of us and et al of better lights of yesterday. No fireflies had died today for this. But the old sea was on the move, heavy and hungry swelling ready to give itself up, breathing in and out mightily, satisfied with itself.

The sea was agitated, it looked fattened, sluggish and smug, about to heave and give back all that it took. The sea was stirring, no longer waiting for the Carmine September. But what is so great about that? What was so grand about the once blue sea? The sea only takes, it doesn't give anything back. That was its only greatness. Fortunately, no one was listening to the ocean, leastways not to this one.

This isn't about the sea. No, this is about the trees nearby, in a soft distance swaying softly. Not oaks or firs but palm trees, palm trees swayed in this volume, native and tasty. Trees slightly drunk and mostly rebellious. Resentful. They didn't want to be kindling for someone else's writing no more, why the heck should they make others fly while they stay rooted in one place? Spillage of ink, yuck! Words, what good are they? No one cares about them anymore. What power do they have in a steampunk world where the machines are sentient. Though the trees readily admitted they think of words sometimes, they missed the blackness of ink. They sure loved Jesse Wallace's novels. And they missed the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs themselves dreamt of trees stripped of everything, and the stripped trees were patiently dreaming of extinction.

Let's talk about that for a while, no? In a corner of the night, let us decipher our own scrawl.
All the trees, erstwhile and new, were shaking in the wind, wavering ready to roll off this paper-like fuzz and dandelion. Just dust them off the pages, will ya, blow them off the surface and you are good to go. Stupid Saoirse, no need to talk, no need to ruin new things now. There's no song to tremble to here.

Trees were clustered in a clearing a little to the left, at the end of the dirt path that leads down to them, at the very edge of this little story. They were gathered there for something, let's not disappoint them. Walk down the stone stairs and stand in between them, they are rustling so sweetly. Forget the sea, and listen to them.

In that clearing, all the trees rippled swinging back and forth. The false light was trapped there within the knowing woods, secrets making them nod. Sudden abrupt movements in the recesses of that very small forest and the local rabbits scattered; an explosion of furry tiny bodies. They were the effect, but what was the cause? Oh, these two. Why couldn't they have stayed in their cabin, the moon gave them plenty of reason to stay there. Was that pliable feeling only for the strangers to enjoy? Two people in the woods, and all the white rabbits scurrying away trying to escape the noises humans made inside their heads. Silly bunnies, that was their mistake. These two, a man and a woman, weren't human. A boy who could float and a girl who wouldn't. But they both could swim in a Gaimaned ocean.

Everything is evanescent, says Annie.
Who is Annie? says I.

Deciding to be in summer again, home's gone. But a heart's still here waiting for the beat of hers, eagerly waiting for her dirtied kisses. Her last fiery kiss had taken him back to the violent days of Völuspá, those violent shades, Hearkening back to days when she breathed into him, the wonder of her touch could do that. But that very kiss got stolen, as did the hearth between her thighs. A winter bird did that. Her deadbeat heart lay dead somewhere else. Look across the untouched beach and the pure sand dunes, see all the water's gone. She just isn't watery enough anymore. Where are her tears?

There, look at that. The sun's about to cleave into the night. Then the new sun like this new song melted on her face, and now I want to too whilst the palm trees swaying in the wind over yonder. Only the quiet of the sun made all of her faces shine like that. All the trees grinning in that small clearing near the water, what's left of it anyway, agreed.

But we were talking about the two people walking in the woods. Back to that narrowed sunshine. No more night here.

Walking across the forested floor, in the middle of their trek, he started to have second thoughts, lots of them and most of them about her. He looked up, he got spooked. Why did he lookup? He was frightened, all the trees were scaring him. He couldn't stop listening to what they were saying, what they kept telling him. Even in the daylight what they meant to say, got to him. Little did he know, the trees were scared as well, even though they were the instrument of terror themselves. Despite the fact, the elements meant them no harm. The truth was the trees were scaring themselves. Why? The trust between all in this fable was fraught with the unknown. Oh, well what can you do?

She felt something and glanced at him. One look at him, she could see how badly shaken he was. So she did what was natural, she started to take him out of the woods, even though it was disingenuous as hell for her to do so. It was not her story after all and it wasn't up to her to decide what she owned him. But she did decide to become his exit. Trees watching them, she took his hand, moss glistened angrily at that, probably objecting but she proceeded to find a way out for him anyway. His hand in his hers, the slight touch of her palm against his, and the palm trees bestirred themselves emboldening, getting reckless, reviving the old rivalry between the gods and men, and between them too of course. They were in there as well. Why not, the trees were always there. They gleefully stirred the timeless pot of atavistic animosity between all those who played this drear game. They did that because of her and her alone. She alone is responsible for the rift. She was the root cause behind every problem the humankind ever faced. A caustic cause everyone wanted to make their own. A sigil all wanted to pick up and that’s including myself. But here’s the thing, They all wanted to get behind her yet she's one cost no one wants to pay. Except those trees. There is a good reason why she is the real reason everything is such a mess. That's because the ocean, that one yeah, obeyed only her. Having surrendered to her when the world was first created, and then made undone. But this isn't about the sea, it's about the trees. Ask them, they'll tell you. What were the trees doing at this point, you ask? Well, more daring, they started to make him even more uncomfortable the way they were staring at him; he wanted to hide behind her, which was odd he was so used to hiding inside her. Inside out she was his sincere succor.

Hurriedly, she was looking for an opening but not finding it. How could she, she was an egress herself, the very out she was looking for. But no one told her, for who appreciate mothers though she wasn't one. The trees knew that he did too but he wouldn't tell her or distract her attention, dissuade her from rescuing him in any way. Malicious and bitter rivals that they were again once again, trees were warning her, well they were trying. She simply didn't speak their tongue anymore. Whatever they were saying clung to her head like fog, the pink streaks in her hair started to look glazed over. He sighed, this glove wasn't attractive anymore. What was he thinking coming down here following her smile, reddened even without her cape? They needed to cut an opening now. Now, right now!

A certain slant of light tried to angle into the cluster of overgrown green canopy. Her grip still firm, her gait assertive, she led him on. But what a ghost she still was for him. Home wasn't here, she was. Looking at her, why did he want to be home, when she was with him? While she was still holding him, he opened his hand, flexing his fingers and then closing his fist, he enmeshed their fingers again. He felt her, he felt it. What she was. Her touch was cometary.

His loneliness must be chafing her, she reassured him. She patted the back of his hand, her thumb stroking his skin. It was weird, she was squeezing his hand, and the cherry trees everywhere were erupting into flames. Every tree was susceptible to the things she did with her hands, it was a little crazy just how beautiful that was, and she was a little seek crazed up after all. The trees did have a lot to be jealous of, - no wait, envious of- thanks Homer!

Maybe she was trying to become his Thought. Pace slow, head down, the arch of her simple smile dappled with the borrowed sunlight. The swaying of her hips, the motion of it all brought to mind the lagoons they left behind. Behind them, in front of them. Her and him. Him and her. And the trees. The trees were making too much noise, they seem to be raveling in his distress. The tallest of them reminded him of the sea. The roar of the sea wasn't making him sick, just to be clear. He was just sick of the sea. All the blueness making him gag. Even far away and further distanced by her, he could still smell the sea, he smelt the sea. And amidst the trees, the sea knew him only too well. It was all sickening. Driving him insane, slowly and by increments. Little by little, a slow burn. Soon enough, they'd get back to the sea. With the sea so far away how could he still smell it? He finds himself looking at her.

Her grip tightened, he forgot, and they walked on. She leading him to the safety of her designs that was by her design, tugging him along rather nicely and so completely. Deigning to take him there her way as they trudged and trundled, on and on through the encompassing trees.

The trees were snickering, saying something to each other, something, making him wish even more he wasn't here. The trees whispered and her tresses echoed their resinous words, her pink streaks mocking him even.

Admit it, they all seem to be saying to him, you care for her.
While you are at it, the trees also intoned, admit that she is as lovely as your thoughts.

Then they admonished him, hey hi hello, you just stood at the water's edge. Just near enough where the waves touched your toes, almost close enough. Lingering at the threshold, straying on the fringes when the real damn thing, and damned thing indeed, damn her, was within your stupid little mortal grasp.
Rasped the dying trees, within reach you little fool of a man and you had the wherewithal too for that, lucky you. but what can we humble trees say of your head. In your head, you were king too. And rightly so. You stood too long wiggling your toes at the surf. The warm foam lapping up your feet, licking the soles with salt as the salt of memory licked you. No spume brightened the faces; yours or hers. Though you couldn't take what she was spewing at the edge of your old world. You just couldn't resist falling in, could you? Not falling off or falling apart, you didn't dare listen to the ocean that was her sea.

That very song of hers could have been yours. The trees went on, all of it, only yours. But lonely you- alas, you are no white knight nor a White Rabbit for that matter. It is okay to be afraid sometimes, but you sir, are a coward.

The trees were done, but since he wasn't quite undone yet, they went on to do him a huge disservice, furthermore. They replaced each star there ever were with his thoughts. No consent of his required for that kiss of fiction. Those trees, air, and bones that they were. You get tired of them rather quickly, only dottle of them remained, about to be smoked like happiness. Yet those moribund trees dared to actually do that; touch his thoughts. They weren't going to last but their desire to knead something alive was stronger than their boles. However, those trees did show him the stars, so they had his gratitude and many thanks.

And then abruptly, she took him out, pulling him out of there. Just like that, they were out of the woods. But they left something of his, not hers mind you, but his behind in their wake. And the trees took something from him that wasn't him; they got swindled too. So there is that to be cheerful about.

Ergo, little of him was held behind them and something else came with them instead. Something followed them outside as they made their escape from the trees. Something feral, something inky.

Somewhere between the mouth of that deep forest and where he needed to be was his home. Then there was her to be considered. She was with him, but then again, she wasn't.

Where did she go? Look there! Of course, she now stood in the middle of that road, at that junction. She became his other choice.

Two lanes. One leads to her, one leads to home. One leads to nowhere, and that was where he wanted to be.

But in the middle of the middle of his nowhere, there he stood.

- which road to take
- what to choose
-which to trudge
-which is home
-witch is her
-too many forks
-too many bends
in the road
-not enough of them Irish
- which of them to be walked on
- what to trek
-which forested floor to be trodden.
- which path should he forge?
her skin never ends.

Come on now, which foliage to part first. Go on, and there is a river. Do you ford it? And from where to forage from, from whence even, oh, you are so fancy.

After that, crave the stairs out of the Callanish stones, go on make them. But. When to mount them and which of the Ariel poems to recite aloud while on top? In that still moment, read Plath's poetry out loud while this Snow Moon looks on, watching over him.

And

Then. If you must know. And he did. Which of the lips to graze first? Which ones, he really must know. Quick, seriously tell him, he really must know right away. What a culinarily dilemma he faced but he had his preferences, too. Just so you know, and boy do you know.

In form of an answer, the dead leaves rustled tearing out of the branches, dying even more so. They fell from the trees but didn't land on her open palms. Contrary to how he felt that's where all things ended up; in her hands. Though it was her face that he wanted to end on, he couldn't help himself. How could he not? Before her, he didn't know how to end anything. He couldn't find an ending. After all that was once her, he became intimate with his endings, all of them. Looking at her, he can wring out any ending now.

Here we go again, the trees were whispering once more. But this time he was mindful enough to listen.

Can you survive her dreams? They asked him and asked nothing of him. He looked down at his hand still in hers, laced together. Suddenly, he was sure. He nodded curtly, his gesture oddly reminiscent of old forest kings.

I have been thinking about this for a long time now. He told the trees. I have been saying this for a while now. I just realized it and I'm certain of it. These are just bad dreams. In the badlands, those dreaming of us are bound to wake up sooner or later.

He found that the trees were still listening, so he added. I don't know much but I know this. One Day Life will be Her and I'll be Home again. Two separate things, I know but they don't have to be. Anyway, that's my takeaway from all this. From this little walk through these here woods.

Then he told the trees to stop walking with him and get back to their forest. He was no longer their visitor. What an ending but not exactly the end this was.

Look, he said to her. There's a beautiful girl.
She looked at him for the first time within this timeline. Where, she said.

Here.

Doesn't matter. It's all a disappearing act, she told him in earnest.

And he knew as sure as the moon would come out later tonight that a voice can be home too. There was a whole civilization lost in her voice. Lost on that highway. Right now, her voice held a different history of rain within it.

He looked at her again, closed his eyes and let the memories of her flood in the chosen darkness. He looked at her in memory. Then opening his eyes, in actuality. A girl made beautiful in the shallows. He thought if he said that long enough, he'd convince himself as well as her. A beautiful girl, he repeated. Insisted. A beautiful girl, and not just a mere thought or a simple painted memory. And sometimes, that's all you need; shuffle the ivory deck a bit and pick a memory at random. That's all you'll need this winter to snuggle with, a memory and some music to keep you warm and safe. Sometimes a memory is all you have to get by and sometimes that is enough. Sometimes there is enough magic and sometimes magic is enough. Overkill? I agree, Yusra.

He didn't pick where to go really, but she was by his side again and if he let it, she could become the very thing he lost...... to her.

He glanced at her. Speaking of the moon. You know, the moon has turned you into all sorts of beautiful things so many different times. You could do to help the poor thing out once in a while. Even once in a blue moon! That's only fair and proper. Moon has always cherished you for some reason. Moonbows have always been your friend, You have always been such a bitch to her just because you could.

To his surprise, she agreed with him. She accepted his request and the request of the moon.

She looked at him. He looked at her.
They were no longer some paintings waiting to be perfected. They let it go, gelled, and in abandon were once again in a single frame. Nothing framing them there but they wanted to be there on their own and they own that.

The moon was almost out by then, intending to be full tonight, of all nights, full of thoughts of Other Them. But the moon vowed to fill his January with her and promised to pour all of him into her, a solemn promise no matter how unbearable that makes it for her. Moon promptly filled her winter with proper sleep, thus perfecting her wintersleep. The moon still cared about her, him she didn't like anymore. He doesn't listen to her keening anymore. But the moon wasn't worried, all she felt was a relief. Her work done, pleased with herself, the bloated moon hummed happily as the rest of the reality went to righteous sleep.

Oh, you thought this was over? This isn't the end. It's not even a sense of an ending. You know better by now; how whimsical I am about my endings, all of them. Do you hear those drums?

No, it ends with them and it hasn't because nothing ended between them, has it?

No, for years now the Taxman has been warning about the end of days and this is not how everything would go. Maybe things wouldn't go like Robert Barathoen went, but everything will go, all of it.

I have been there, I have been that. I don't want to be that guy again. At least not for a while anyway. but I miss being that guy when the only enemy I had was myself. When there was nothing to hate. I was as optimistic as that rainbowed clown over at HitRECord. Lordy, I love that guy. But there isn't much hope when there is too much to hope for.

A knife to the head works for the living zombies, it should be enough for the overly imaginative too, who are too optimistic about their imaginations. A single thrust of a sharp blade to the temple and you'll have another thing in your skull to twist around and make the sufferings that aren't yours, yours.

I know, you have no coin for this poem but back to those two. Even if they are not seeking any celestial bodies falling from the sky right now nor any shooting star coming their way.

Really, no need for them to be on a lookout for any rocks, Giacobini or the one that had wiped out the ones that were here before us.

As planetary as these two are, they just didn't care which plane they were on. Look at these two, ambling around in the wintry wasteland without a care, walking for their past when it was their future that was looking for them and it was already disappointed with them.. But of course, they weren't really at the South Pole, nowhere near it. Nor south of anywhere, where they should be. The fact is, this is a dream the forest is having.

Now let us return to these misfits, Iwan Rheon less no less, as all the swallows return to Capistrano.

We could have found a place to put your heart if you had found this song sooner. Alight, I am done. I am alright, I am doing OK.

That wasn't how it ended.

So this is how it had happened, this is how it all went down.

She took him off the gamy game trail and taken him to the very edge of the woods. There weren't any decorative hedges around. She didn't even find any overgrowth archways trimmed in Tolkien motifs.

They weren't getting out, she couldn't cut any opening, there was no way out. She wasn't frustrated, she wasn't the one stuck in a memory. She simply didn't care.

Holding his hand, she felt his tension and to her surprise, she found out she still cared about him. Crap, that was unfortunate. She tried again but the trees wouldn't let her, again they blocked her.

She stifled a shriek, she wouldn't panic, she will not despair she was breathing for two. To take his mind off the trees, she had taken him off the trail, pretending their end was in sight. She squeezed his hand tenderly, comforting him.

She would shelter him, protect him as much as she could from her friends. Those friends leered at that, trees didn't tell her she was only imprecating him by delaying the inevitable.

Hard cut to him, just for a second. He felt her struggle to remain hopeful, holding him up, trying to remain his champion. She was with him and still for him. And for him, she was whistling Sigur Ros tunes as she whittled the foliage and pilfer a path just or him. But like the sadness of the sun her music was not enough. Athwart, she was right there side by side and by his side, their shoulders bumping against each other's as they walked, but he distinctively felt her drifting farther and farther away from him. Not to that blighted strange sea this time, no. But away from herself. She was here and she very much wasn't. That was evident. Even if it wasn't. It felt like her mind was on something else, and her heart. His words used to have heart but now it looked like she realized that the words are more than just words. She needed to forget that intimately.
They were walking together but it seemed like she was running away from him. She was barefoot. She was the girl running. She was Passenger's song. He couldn't possibly have that. He wanted to but she wouldn't let go of his hand. What could he do? Her presence limned her absence. Her absence taught him more than her presence ever could.

The past they shared was rotten at this point and by now even he started to feel something was amiss. He was smelling overripe things, dead autumn flowers chief among them. The sense of dread thickened with every step. He couldn't shake the feeling that the dead were walking beside him. He risked a glance. He was no mathematician but in the graveyard utterly devoid of secrets, she was the only one alive. And next to him. That he could see. As Henri Poincaré would say only to him; it is all a fakery but he would point out and say, don't fret and finish. And as unlikely as it seemed he just might have a bullet for her. Though clearly she wasn't his valentine or anyone's.

Alright, children back to the reality that's her. Unfortunately.

All the abandon of the swallows
Raincheck ..... maybe.

Another February, another goodbye. Okay, yeah sure once more but with music! The Ostara kind, you know what I am talking about, it’s only fitting. Sure why not, it was March just a few seconds ago.

But of course, that was before I knew you. So is this. All this, yes. Though tea first, I’d prefer it that way. In fact, I insist you insist on doing that. You brew it, pour it, cup the mug, cradle it keep it warm, keep it interesting, hold the ranks, you watch, I’ll drink it.

It is my turn to take advantage of you. So chop chop, get a move on. Put on the stone kettle on that wood stove. That tea is not going to make itself. Don’t rock the boat, watch your fingers, just get on. Get on the boat. This moon reminds me of home, looking at it could be about that, it is reminding me of the ruins that didn't ruin us. But the ruinous sun, damn the sun looks like it is a little in love with you. Still? It is burning just a little harder for you. Damn the sun, the shadows are thickening. They are unfurling. They are readable and stark, but unforgiving.

Tell me something; what was the point of anointing the moon as a knight for this night, when it won’t come at you. For you. It Follows. You. Not because you are mobile and it is unmoving where ever it is. Tell me, I really wanna know, though something tells me you won't be telling me anything. But when you move, it moves along with you, coming down to you, coming for you, following you. And I? Well, I’d rather look for the sun. But the moon is never too far away from the likes of us, burning between us like a random thought.

It’s raw and tender. Don’t touch it. Haha, you sneaky little schemer, you don’t have to show me the way, that way inside that way. I quite agree with your moon that bears your name, I concur.

You are still one of the most beautiful things I didn’t see. Can’t unsee your form, though you are formless now. The girl you were, reflecting the girl you are now. Though there are no mirrors here, cracked or otherwise. The glass that’s still between our worlds remembers the touch of your paintbrushes, your bizarre strokes, the not so gleaming glass remembers, all of them. You are still a skilled painter. Why wouldn’t you be?

In this static age, you are the only chalk artist left. Your little red tongue is still red. Stick it out. We are not there yet. Not yet. Keep talking even if you are silent. Want this. Other words evoke other emotions but all the words are about our home.

Though this is hardly your suicide note. I have them and they love me. Words. Brittle but words all the same. All the black sails are up. What can I say, when this started, this was about you. Stay. Let me insult you. Remember how the mermaids had loved me last fall. They did things of quite another nature to you, do you remember that? Not feeling so gifted now, are you? I really don’t want to imagine you again. But. I can imagine you breathing underwater. I can still see your skin under all the covers, slimy, grimy, and aglow. Your eye held a look of otherworldliness then. Your hair awash with spent moonlight, you head moving. Your thighs gleaming with different thoughts. You were begrimed as a whole graffiti; stuffed with too many of my feelings. Which is good, I no longer feel anything. Numb as you were when you were alive.

I licked something of yours, a memory, fleeting but yours. Your fingers still taste of you. I find that to be funny because that couldn’t possibly be, not after all this time in that darkened tomb. All the bandages we had wrapped you in are moldy now, rotting away, peeling off your body of lies. All those ribbons cut from the last damask robe you wore are corrosive now. It is no longer any fun, unwrapping you is crude now. We don’t possess the Rosetta Stone to make any sense of you.

But the toxicity of your ink is still there on your fingers and it’s heavy quite like you. Just like your dreams your ink has weight. I miss your sunless weight though you are weightless now. Where you are now though, you are not on any diner’s menu. The safety of your womb isn’t an option now. Oh sublime fehu, I can’t breathe. Stolen. You are an arsonist. Why are you still here? What is this? Your mouth is not a question anymore. The dead are in love with it and the corpses of trees yearn for it. Your stupid inkwell heart keeps pumping something liquidy into you liquefying you further. I keep staring, I cannot help but. Your mouth keeps spilling the blackness of the stars. Your funerary breath is delicious. You are diffusing something peculiar, something woodsy. Copses in my head are doused with it, dark and wet. My mind, my poor mind cannot quite contain your entire corpus, the whole of it is too huge. But you are still in the air, amidst the white noise, floating in the air. A certain pine scent. It smells suspiciously like pittosporum. You are filling the air and what’s left of our world with it. But everything is wet about these woods. Bury the gods deep in here. This isn’t what I wanted.

Why is the company of nice smelling women thought to be a good thing? Poor escape that is. They’d ruin your mind and empty you out just the same.

Suddenly, I was looking at her. She was standing so close, her actual actuality even better than her imagery, simpler than all these words. She is nonugly, kind of. She's beautiful in a way that she could only be contained within unknown paintings, unpainted by even more obscure artists, not even being painted. But right now, she was out of those frames. Standing there, between her two worlds, gracefully existing in front of me. Her breath resinous, so stale but in my face. Empty but Smiling, bumping into me every so often, can't quite stay in one place, flickering out of my mind. She was really breathless, out of breath, quivering and breathing like a long time Time Traveler no longer traveling through time. She was timeless yet immediate. And she was telling me something so timely. She was saying. "It's okay. Breathe. You don't need another war. You don't have to fight now. This is one fight you needn't fighting. This fight you could do without fighting at all." That's when I knew I wouldn't be finishing this. I won't. Let's murder these trees together. But she knows. I have a certain affinity for all ghosts not around me. Though only one remains my favorite. And she's right there standing in the corner of this atelier her very own attic grinning but refusing to haunt me.

And maybe, this is still July, maybe. Maybe in this July mermaids with legs are still drowning in my tub a year later, sinking, screeching, mutely screaming their silent screams, through this muted silence, dying slowly dying their watery deaths. Maybe July is mermaids month and may it remain so forever. But February will always be a month for ghosts and for farewells. A month of ghosts and of farewells. But do remember and keep this in mind. A Writer's farewell is never a goodbye.

But then she was fading from this page, this paper so frail, her last night seeping into her and she was saying to me, no one should haunt you but me.

°ä°ùì´Ç³¦³ó

�.. and then there were these two, moving about unchecked, going around unclaimed, unbalanced. Unsure of their place in life, like stray images flickering from memories not yet conceived. Drifting onward unperturbed, this dyadic picture of words made up of clay that was very human, were two disparate worlds, these two, thrown as much into the ordained chaos as they were into each other’s arms, fitting rather well together, despite the randomness of all things.

They walked on whilst quietly disarming their progenitors, who quite hopelessly pointlessly were aspiring to be propagators. Stay with me now, don’t get lost in this wold of felled words. So let’s stay on the game trail and track them. These two idiots. All the reasons in all the worlds to be relentless, for there is plenty of their tangy spoor leading up to them. And these two? So convinced they were of their lives that were non-sequitur at best, so proud of their reality that was stale at best. On top of that, a reality that was so utterly, so disgustingly dependent on someone else’s amusement, hinging on something riskier, far frailer than a song of the sea; on the sanity of poets.

In spite of their complete lack of self-worth, a need for a voice that best remained silent, no world was ready for the shape of their sounds. Yet. They struggled on, they should’ve just forfeit. Losers, these two. Still, they went on brewing their brittle little end; in fact, they were rushing toward all their endings. Already their end was wringing out from the de facto simplicity, that was the fact that they were alive. They existed so therefore they must not one day. After all the stars fail themselves too. But fools that they were, these two were still being charmed by their end that was predictable, and predictably they were being corrupted by their limited time. Their bodies weren’t a liquid mass of error but glass fashioned out of hourglass’s essence, and the sand? The sand was already running out. Fucking morons, they deserve their fate, disastrous as it were. Who told them they could go against it but now even the fabled Muses couldn’t change their fate. Who told them they could have more than what was being given to them. What the moon was allocating should have been enough for them and that bitch wasn’t generous, to begin with. Just look at all those lost wolves hunting for the Hunter’s Moon in the woods.

These two were the latticework of disaster, which should tell them something, stupid they are. The fatalism of their fate no longer nauseating them, nourished them instead.

Yeah, told you they were idiots. And I will hush up, shutting up now. I will hide from now on in the shadows of these two like the sun does skirts behind the moon, like ugliness lurking inside of love. I will be settling in for the Long Halloween. But worry not, I will remerge, unlike the Snow Moon, at the end of this sorry tale. I will come back in the end like a lost and long forgotten god that was never remembered in the first place.

And what were these two if not specks of inevitability trundling toward the churning gray waters? Fragmented pieces of the same paper, both of them were ripped from a single idea. But they were the worst kind of thieves, purloining the dust they were stealing from themselves. But at least they were honest thieves, they only stole from themselves, they were their only victims. In their haste, they merged then tumbled on like contents from a painting, slowly eddying out to the ocean. The lone painting was ruined split wide open like a cracked egg the yolk spilling out. The story in the painting leaking out, in that mix they were singular characters of two very separate minds.

Even I am getting a head rush from all this uber cuteness, just icky, just no. I am supposed to be this clever jongleur, but I am the one getting lost in the woods. Tonight the bloodied moon is not for me. Yeah, yeah I said I’d keep quiet but we don’t always get what we want, do we? So shut the hell up, I can still hear you. I never wanted to be the omniscient narrator for others; we as silkworms spinsters tricksters do get weary ourselves, experiencing what we will never experience for ourselves. Breathing for others, we are more alone that way. What’s the point in making someone else fly? Anyone can do that but not anyone can be us and we sure as Larry Brown ain’t like anyone else. We are just whining here, letting off steam, we are not rooks here, because, in the end, it’s worth being all alone just to write all this.

But to make others fly. Where is the fun in that? So let’s try this again. Let’s take it from the top, let us end before we can begin. There is no way out for them but these two victims of each other’s thoughts, addicts of their shared pleasure, knew a backdoor out of this garden designed to keep them safe. They needn’t eat an apple to earn the distinction of a plain and swift departure. Deluding and eluding the engineers of their extinction, they prettified the exit wound, squeezing their way out through the opening thus belaying their execution, just delaying the evitable thrust of the knife to their ruined temples. But still, there is a victory in the smallest of respites, solace in the smallest of lies.

Ah, fuck it, and Stanley Kubrick it. What’s one more take, hum?

So, here we go into the water again, go under it. So, we redo the dance. Let’s start this dance again.

He was out with her on their last night not because the blood moon had promised them a safe passage or that the stars had lined up to witness their fall. But because they owed it to the trust they had built like a stone tower to live in without any gnarled doubts. Their last walk wasn’t a commemoration of whatever that had gone between them during their papery lull between very real storms, or some kind of past they managed to share, but rather their walk of unshame was a bacchanal of sorts, of all sorts. In some small corner of his wind-up heart, his heart all wounded up but not broken, somewhere on the outer rims of his quaint mind, he knew he was taking her out because he hadn’t thanked her for last night and he couldn’t thank her for this night.

So meeting in the middle, he accosted her. They were out on the town in search for revels, for a basic good time in a place that for all they knew was the known world. Theirs was a celebratory dance, maybe a war dance, mayhaps a prayers for rains. One thing’s for sure the grounds they were walking on were hallowed. It’s just that it was harvest time but they were more than ripe for the reaping. How so? Well. They had with them sickles shiny with hopes. They were hoping their glinting sickles with dragon bone handles were sharp enough to cut through the wealth of their hosts� thoughts, fan away from the fogs of their indulgences and end their situation that was a hostage. Hand in hand, footsteps in harmony they built their stone tower. Everything starts with a little bit of wanting and they knew what they wanted.

Now she didn’t have to let down her hair ever again, not even for him. If he wanted to go down there for some reason then he needn’t come back up again, it was that simple, that impossible. They built what they wanted to build. What they fashioned together exhausted the distance between them. Meanwhile distancing them from everything that had ever loved them. With just one stroke, they sundered themselves from everything else. In that loss, they were fucking free. Though they had a rather unpleasant task at hand; they aimed to become human at the very hour of their demise. Truly disfavorable this business. All this venom and there weren’t enough people to share it with equally. Besides, no one wanted to chug down this cranium juice. So juicy, so yum. Such life is a disgrace; toxicity should be drink gratefully.

They swayed, whipping back and forth, in gelling they become. Not one but themselves, together in their own individuality. The wind didn’t make them do it, no one was making them, but their hands slipped into each other’s, intertwining more than just fingers, but they trudged on. The boardwalk under their feet felt like it was crawling like it was offering resistance to their movements, to the momentum of their progress. When in actuality it was propelling them forward, away from their gaining gainsaying persecutors. The boardwalk wasn’t an impediment, it was helping them escape. This thing their succor was better than those who professed to be their allies. This boardwalk of crumbling bones was their friend.

And the Sun? The Sun really thought it was their friend, but it hadn’t quite mastered the inner working of an honest friendship. Their Sun punchdrunk on the sincerity of her promise become philosophical, it graduated from being erratic to being insane. It became a rogue, a scavenger, a mystic, a soothsayer; it became a naked priestess swaying in its own temple. Useless. Even now, on this bespeckled starry star-freckled night here blurring between the paper lines fading out of these fray pages, the Sun couldn’t wait for the morning to come so that it could gorge her face. It just wanted the morning bells to chime the fuck on, so it could rip her fucking face off. Sun would look at her as she looks at it. For in the wisteria tinge morns of morrows in the burrows of yesterday, when the wet dawn jettisons her from its womb and she lay there fresh and glistening in the rumpled bedcovers, tousled from sleep and raked by her ugly dreams. When the world first woke up, she is herself. In those purple mornings, she is most herself; the mornings become heartening because she’s part of that puzzle. Unending, upending, tangled in the warmed sheets, stretching, arching back, uncurling engaging in misplaced acts of lordosis bliss like a cat Gaimaning out of these rough pages, with grace intelligence, and intent, um subtle things like that. At dawn lying in bed, listening to the matins calling out only to her, in the mornings she is beautiful.

Sun no longer their friend was done playing games. It couldn’t wait any longer to look at her; behold her face and take shelter in the protective parasol of her shadows. Sun longed to gaze at her misshapen face broken from all her wants and desires. All that she wanted and desired broke her face. But what the Sun loved most about her was she always woke up right; most people don’t really get upright. And that she could suck the night into giving up and hide stolen ideas well, was just a bonus. So anyway, the doleful Sun wanted to snatch away all the night’s excuses, not so gently remove all the constraints. It wanted to tear apart the straightjacket moon had helped put it on it to hide all its counterfeit gold. It wanted to do away with the inky cloak wrapped around its shoulders.

Wanting to shake off the worn-out eiderdown it would uncloak itself. The Sun wanted to reach out now not later but now in the torn apart night to feel her breath warming the air, turning the night into day. The night would convert and the Sun would give back all that the night had given during the day. Kneading her breath with its slimy fingers, Sun would frost what came forth from her mouth, turning that into vermilion icicles freezing them right there in the skies. Her iced breath now frozen flakes hanging in the air, Sun would give leeway to the much hateful parhelions, letting them poach its territory. All for her. One look at her and yeah no wonder it was willing to share its space with those fickle sundogs.

All for her.
For her
To her.

But the echo of her arbitrary denials stuck somewhere between then and the now, felt like her paint-stained hands clawing at the open sky and but in actuality clutching his chest, her broken fingers digging into his blue shirt, her wobbly scent twisting the air around him, why must they grapple with whatever bleak reality there is left. He just thought she needed to stop sketching like a crazy person, possessed. I kinda agree with that idiot, but what neither of us knew, she felt like the only sane inmate of an asylum, without a nibbled pencil, a blank sketchpad in front of her, she is quite lost. For with these meager shades of darklings, she wanted to become the color commentator of her own life, infertile as it were. Although in a moment of weakness, how can I not be weak at this moment with her dreaming, I’ll concede that her bloodied heart still beating, pumping away emptily on the marble countertop right next to her sketchbook is really beautiful? Just, why is her charcoal pencil still in her hand? I want to take hold of moving hand, pin her wrist down to keep her from moving. I wanted to tell her to be still, for her sake as much as mine. I want to prevent her hand from jerking about on the pages, to help her contain her ink within her, to stop her from spilling fresh bouillon gooeyness onto these pages, her bloody heart was a bordello not for her images but her sketchbook. Whenever we can, we must contaminate good women’s choices.

But we were talking about the Sun, let’s not digress OK, that’s the quickest way to earn its wroth, its spiteful like that.
But that’s the kind of effect she had on the sun to make it revolt against its own nature. To make it want to capsize where there’s no water. Where all it had to do was float to be the kingmaker of everything and it chose her. What a fucking loser, right? I am right, right?

And what kinda effect she had on him? Well, let’s see. She always did end up letting him affect her instead, allowing him to smudge her across his pages, over and over again. Not sure why. Since he didn’t care about her abilities nor did he care that her superpowers were greater, better than his. He didn’t understand any of her sacrifices that were celestial, though there were no gods accepting them. Fuck all did he know about the flint behind her every action. What did it matter to him that she was rearranging everything inside of her, for him, or that she was quieting all the dark matter in her to make more room for him to occupy. So that she could become his castellan, a true gatekeeper of his castle. All that she put herself through was nought to him.

Everything that she did do for him was eclipsed by her unapologetic love for the mechanism of his hocked heart.
Of her face and her mask. Unlike his former drinking buddy, he wasn’t interested in her face at all, fawn and dewed at dawn that unwrapped her. If he laid his eyes upon her face, her countenance shattering from all his longings, upon his gaze. Even a glance at her face non-ugly, she’d heave up all her secrets, give them all to him open-handedly. Then the carcass of her mystery wouldn’t have anything left to chew on. See, he wanted to look at those parts of her anatomy that were still elegiacal and he wanted to gnaw on those parts.

Despite what the wind had designed for them, in spite of its schemes, they were still holding hands. Their fingers entwined, their thoughts weaving in and out around them. They didn’t let go of each other, hands remained tightly clasped. They walked on trying to get off from the boardwalk. The sea nearby was swollen with a hunger for their world, famished waiting, breathing heavily, thinking of them licking its chops, getting ready, forks and knives in hand. But they moved on, the city watched them move. The city watched them, their cloaks astir in pursuit of their freedom, their mantle in a certain light lemon colored, rippling in their wake, chasing their happiness that was illicit because it was exclusive, um not sure who is stupider.

Almost running, almost existing, hand in hand they dollop their way through the throng of the crowd made up of atrophic masses, or was it the other way around. They, the misfigured ones in this simple equation. They pushed through the people made suddenly real by their touch, jostling others they went past. Buildings parallel to them followed their progress their two-person procession, the glass of windows snickering behind their backs. The windows of the buildings glared at them like they knew where they were headed. Everybody in their path, all the folks their lore, all the humanity gathered around them not watching them were just fueling their need to be alone with each other.

Everyone there was throwing an accelerant to their urge for solitude, lobbing at them Molotov bombs made from just their opinion and indifference, dousing them with their scorn for good measure. They trudged on regardless but the sky was irked with them too, that they made the sea want them and the sands craved them. Plus, the City Watching Them was fixing to seize their happiness, immoral and legal.

The space between them, grudgeless now, that disinterested distance was disappearing like planets in full retreat. The most loyalists yet frailest of heavenly bodies, retrograding but giving back, not taking anything this time. Words recovering, returning, like a dark night coming back full force, nothing forced anymore, it was like an easy friendship, just there. Natural and organic. Until it wasn’t. Butt. The invisible cord linking them, that frayed tassel forgotten by the gods and the cause of much discord among the few remaining stars, that chainlink between them, was rendering them even more inseparable. What is becoming, growing within them, that islet what they have is really hard to write about. Not because it makes them happy, which it does thinking it’s enough, it is not. Not because it gives them strength, gives heart to their dying struggle enliven their cause, just barely saving it from being lost. And not because it’s grotesque and it’s most certainly is that, their love is fucking ugly. What’s between them is hard to pin down and harder to translate because it didn’t exist with real people. That kind of stale love. But being written down it was, with electronic ink no less, in that fickle ink. What they held was being tattooed into the pages that were somewhere in the clouds, on paper that was as feelable as the air around them as tangible, it was being written on the skin of their lies. It was also wrong to write that down mostly because she smelled like freshly painted graffiti on the walls of his mind. See, I said mind not heart. Do you really see? I could have but didn’t. Pretty smug about their muted kindness their bloated consent making them smug. Yeah, their smugness is irritating me too. What really gets my goat, in fact, what has gotten the entire Animal Farm, is that their precious golden forged inscribed consent was something that was foisted on them.

Now it has mutated and now it was making them more self-aware but wasn’t part of the plan. The fact that they didn’t exist outside the dreams of dead trees and the songs of deader writers made their bastard happiness even more infuriating. The real risk is asking someone real to want them back, but what the fuck is real anyway, what these two fuckin� losers had was more real than they were. But. They were no longer telling a story that’ll end up with strangled rabbits and dead dreams.

Of what they were wearing
He was dressed in a cloth of black, just a tunic and breeches, no shoes. Yes, earlier I had said he was in a blue shirt. I changed my mind, while not changing the story, what of it? So yeah, he was in a black shirt, wait he had shoes because he’s gonna have to take them off later in this story. A rough leather belt around his waist that she kept brushing her fingers against, its texture reminded her of her colors. Though why she needed colors she didn’t know. A leather belt around his waist studded with gemstones and encrusted with her prayers for him. All the dreams she has yet to weep for him, all the songs still unsung, her songs always had him sad until now. She was in um, she was wearing a black shirt made from the discarded part of the oldest galaxies, her buttoned-up shirt was sewn from the very fabric of the black hole. She was wearing scat anything else, not even a kirtle! Lonely moonbeams slithered down her fat thighs as she swished beside him. Their shadows splashing on the facades of the buildings as they hurried past those buildings, those shadows undulating after them like serpents. But they didn’t need a forbidden fruit to rid them of their clothes, looking at her windswept shirt, he wanted her in that shirt and out of it as well, she too wanted what he didn't want-

And. If you are waiting for some kind of an ending here, then you’ll be waiting a long time, a long long time. You might as well settle in and buckle up. To that end will take a long time coming. See, I told you I’d be back in the end at the end. Do you see? It’s about a pen and an inkwell. It’s about words. Not these but other words. See, when the inkblot gods get drunk and are kind to me, new wordlings happen –sometimes. But what those gods did to me was wrong. Glancing around here, I couldn’t help feeling swindled. They took all that away and gave me her instead? Though to be unfair, it was a fair trade but what kind of barter is that? Truly, what did I give, what did I lose, really? I never needed her to dream; she was just a dream I was having. Now I can’t even find her in my nightmares. And she used to share her lovely nightmares with me, she used to tell me nothing and everything. I might be a flâneur by default. Maybe I am a fabulist? Maybe. And maybe I’ll finish this someday. One Day. Maybe. But those two? Nameless losers but joyous, enjoying their joy despite not even being written out of their own story? Both of them, two of them, fuck them both, fuck the two of them. Maybe I will finish this anyway. But if you are drowning, sinking in water, floundering badly, and if you are waiting for that particular wet peripeteia, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Though.
Not the End. Never.