08-09-2016, 05:53 PM
Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
* * * *
Three. For so long.
Three planets, gyrating in an utterly dark universe.
Three sets of legs. Lips. Knees. Chins.
Tangles.
Knots of them, all together, so they were more like one. Until one, two and three – they came tumbling from the reheated atmosphere of their incubation – Mother. She had come first, Witching. (Maybe she was first to know alone.) But she had waited, patiently, because she had only ever known three. Only ever trusted in three. And they came!
Two! Her. Duplicates, from their chins to their tails.
Three! Him. Different. Necessary because he made them three again.
And then just like that, death took on life’s condition and begot life – and then it died again.
Just three.
She is singular-minded. She breaths and touches her lips to the dips and rises of her chest. She imagines (thinks she remembers) the exquisite closeness of the womb, where lips touched flesh quite unknown but familiar.
She does not yet know, but she has a lifetime to find Two again. They have forever and more. Three does not. Three is painfully finite. Little does she know.
(—or she could live without, forever.)
She runs, trusting that something binds them and that this thing, their thing, means to draw them closer and closer until they collide once more. The universe is too big, now. The universe is no longer theirs and they have lost the suck of each other’s gravities. They are aimless bodies, adrift. She watches for them, with eyes like cinnamon, too, unblinking. She picks her way along paths she think she has traced before, looking down through her ashen hair at the many prints. They could be them, she thinks, any one of them. She presses her own hooves down, harder than before, hoping to leave something behind like beacons for them to follow and find.
Her hope has not died. Maybe because once, long ago, she knew alone and still trusted in three. And they had come.
Things that are most familiar to her: the harsh taste of ash, ribs pressed together like a string of fairy lights, the dull hum of hearts in a quiet cavity – that smell. Thought lacking in pine and Three, She knows that smell like she knows her own and she follows it like a hound into shadow. “Sister–” she croaks, squinting into a perfect mirror, breathing hard. “Where have you been?” Witching’s voice is so soft, and it never betrays her. It is strangely even, though she leans in to touch Gravely's side with longing. “Where is... Reap? You know where he is–” it hangs, half statement, half question, because she has to believe that this is the moment.
WITCHING
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
* * * *
Three. For so long.
Three planets, gyrating in an utterly dark universe.
Three sets of legs. Lips. Knees. Chins.
Tangles.
Knots of them, all together, so they were more like one. Until one, two and three – they came tumbling from the reheated atmosphere of their incubation – Mother. She had come first, Witching. (Maybe she was first to know alone.) But she had waited, patiently, because she had only ever known three. Only ever trusted in three. And they came!
Two! Her. Duplicates, from their chins to their tails.
Three! Him. Different. Necessary because he made them three again.
And then just like that, death took on life’s condition and begot life – and then it died again.
Just three.
She is singular-minded. She breaths and touches her lips to the dips and rises of her chest. She imagines (thinks she remembers) the exquisite closeness of the womb, where lips touched flesh quite unknown but familiar.
She does not yet know, but she has a lifetime to find Two again. They have forever and more. Three does not. Three is painfully finite. Little does she know.
(—or she could live without, forever.)
She runs, trusting that something binds them and that this thing, their thing, means to draw them closer and closer until they collide once more. The universe is too big, now. The universe is no longer theirs and they have lost the suck of each other’s gravities. They are aimless bodies, adrift. She watches for them, with eyes like cinnamon, too, unblinking. She picks her way along paths she think she has traced before, looking down through her ashen hair at the many prints. They could be them, she thinks, any one of them. She presses her own hooves down, harder than before, hoping to leave something behind like beacons for them to follow and find.
Her hope has not died. Maybe because once, long ago, she knew alone and still trusted in three. And they had come.
Things that are most familiar to her: the harsh taste of ash, ribs pressed together like a string of fairy lights, the dull hum of hearts in a quiet cavity – that smell. Thought lacking in pine and Three, She knows that smell like she knows her own and she follows it like a hound into shadow. “Sister–” she croaks, squinting into a perfect mirror, breathing hard. “Where have you been?” Witching’s voice is so soft, and it never betrays her. It is strangely even, though she leans in to touch Gravely's side with longing. “Where is... Reap? You know where he is–” it hangs, half statement, half question, because she has to believe that this is the moment.
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.
immortal silver bay mare