[private] Out with the golden we sew // Rapt

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever She leaves him, falls through his cupped hands like water. He doesn’t know what it is, he does whatever she asks. He devotes himself to her, travels with her to whatever worlds she conjures. He worships her, wretched and wonderful, but she stops meeting his eyes. She leaves, and he is unable to follow. She does not invite him to her kingdom, and he is left on the outskirts, in the meadow or river or forest, and sometimes she returns and then she doesn’t, and he is alone. Alone is worse, now, because he knows what lies at the other end of the spectrum. Her touch, her smile, her eyes boring into him so hot he shivers. The solitude is worse, for he had grasped at something else, and it had slipped through him. He’d known, of course, that she would grow tired of him. What could he offer? He has no powers, no particular strength, all he has a singular devotion, a wont to kneel. Amusing, perhaps, but nothing desirable for longer than a few months. Still. Still. He wants to prolong it. One more time. Then one more. Yet when she calls out, for a moment he freezes, as if her voice electrocutes him. He goes. Of course he does. Towards to sound of her, the scent of her, then – oh! – the sight of her. He wants to smile, but the wrecked look of her face, the streak of tears on her cheeks, stops it. “Kagerus,” he says, aching, “what’s happened?” rapt caius x else