01-28-2018, 08:52 PM
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; His mind is certainly a labyrinth, monsters included. Shadows and turns and puzzles, all lurking. Even he hasn’t solved it – he skirts the edges of the maze, content in this. Content in not knowing. She speaks of the ocean with fondness, which suggests she knew a different ocean than he. The ocean he knows is dark and black, the ocean he knows spit him back out, onto a beach where others come to die. (Where he, once, came to die.) He thinks of the ocean and he thinks of darkness, of an abyss. She thinks of it, and…and what? Something happy; her eyes glisten. Quite suddenly, he envies the ocean, for its ability to make her light up in such a way. “You know a different ocean than I,” he says, but he smiles. She accepts his invitation, and here his smile grows. And then she is close, overwhelming in her presence, and her mouth touches his shoulder and for a moment he’s gone, focused on the brief moment of contact, of the heat of her mouth and the pressure, the realness, and who needs wildflowers when she’s there, blooming in the sun? But. But. He walks. His feet know the path before his mind does, take them to a place near the river, near where the meadow ends. He knew this place, once. He wonders what happened here. Flowers bloom, all sorts, undisturbed in this quiet corner. A willow at the river’s bank moves in the breeze and that seems familiar too, the willow with this delicate fronds that shiver over the back. “It’s funny,” he tells her, though it’s not really funny, “I remember this place, but I don’t. I look out here, and I feel happy, but I can’t tell you why, or what about this place made me happy.” His shoulder brushes hers. Happy. “It is a beautiful place, though.” Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |