new mercies in the morning [pollock]

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

He tilts his head as she laughs, his stare unwavering.

He exchanges no smiles with her. He considers her with hard, black eyes. He contemplates her softness, for of course he can smell it like a wolf smells open wounds. He considers her words and knows then that she is prey-thing, through and through. Martyr; altar—the bones around which his cathedral will be built.

The offerings on which his land will gorge itself and provide in return.

Fear seeks her—
He drops his head, bows to her and to the grace of her sermon in the waste—‘we can fix it together’. His lips part. Fear finds her.
She yells ‘help me!’—that most beloved psalm, echoing across the sandstone and emptiness that does not answer but to repeat the lyrics back in distortion.

Craaack.
Those spartan horns meet her jawline. Senselessness. She falls.
Craack.
He sends them back down, faster than her tongue can taste his kingdom. The skullcap gives between her ears and eyes and she falls with a thud to her side. Blood rushes through the fault lines that form, filling the earth with sanguinary tides. He heaves, sweat lathers his neck and chest—he is abominable. Blood spatters his forehead, dripping down the length of his bridge and cheeks. He can taste it as it slips between his nostrils and down his upper lip.
He listens to her breathe for a moment. Quaking, agonal—final. Her eyes are filmy and rolling.
He rears up, and then bears down.
Crack.
The atlas shakes loose the skull. He comes down in a bow beside her, breathing hard, nose pressed into the dust. He shuts his eyes tights against the sting and cloud, blinking several times to rid the overflow from his sight.
Death.
Crack.
The vertebrae unweave.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.

And then, only the dull, squishy sounds that come after.

He paints and sculpts, until the moon is high and he is spent. Wasted. Contented. Sated. He closes his eyes shut, inhaling deeply. “Thank you,” the gift-giver mutters. For hours more he stays by her like a hyena guarding a carcass, pacing ache into his rotten limbs.

the gift-giver

aw :[ that felt particularly mean