what lies around
(we rest on the silverslicked knife edge until time ends.)
mess to the left and to the right. the gentle echo of pattering rain on glass. further down the street, a gushing pipe bursts. the window is pulled closed, glossing over the leaky puddle of rain on the sill. still air reeks of memory. let the cool fresh breath pass.
the rain still taps on around. i look bleakly through the murk of this room. go to set an alarm for an early morning call. the past surrounds me. it breathes me in until it is time to escape from withering lungs. from dreaming spires and freshly flooded fields. and all this from the glaring squares of time which read: 8.15.
if life is normal then the time displayed is two hours earlier. rise with the sun. but in that time we suspended animation until hours had drifted sluggishly as if dragging feet through a warm, sickly mud.
words reached into now from far away; walking, walking, walking. i remember the step after step over muddy soil, the lurching forwards, letting dewy grass mix with nettle, hill and uncertain stumble, and the colours cast forward. every foot put in front of the other, toward the dawn, but walking into the longdrawn shadows of our own past. now, then and forever seemed to fall into one singular moment, never to be repeated. a time to just be. our outlines melted to dirt, tripping on in the evening light.
our lights faded and we fell into the blue. orange seemed garish. hendrix gave a performance to seven and the barman (from the comfort of a jukebox), as we plunged forward into no-food-on-mondays and warming beer. warm oak tables, worn and scuffed, flagstones and dark stairways. exit probable.
rabbitfeet hopped past; crickets croaked a shallow song, and we ran against night. an improbably simple meal, quenching of thirst and then to sleep.
dreams loomed silently in the corner as the spiders knitted webs over our heads, spinning yarns, weaving tales. tales to catch flies and lies with the quickest of licks. entrapped by silken thread and caught, forever embedded and unable to escape.
the most beautiful and wonderful day; never to happen again.
(but i wish i could let it go)
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