XV. the devil
restraint/release
prelude (orifice)
let gray soften me from inside, and the only elevation my skin meeting air, hairs raised. a pulse to match the pace of heart at rest, and lower layers added from below until I could be the volume of water, descending a canyon you once carved, taking my time on the switchback until cradled by the shadows of nearing dusk, who arrives first from the bottom—
I. a different kind of safety
from this angle
your details obscured by shadow
but the intonation of voice
a confirmation.
I am unraveling in circles
like a spool losing its thread
everything I had wound tightly
against myself, defense
from a threat.
does the skin remember
how to breathe?
from every pore, openings
like doorways of light
behind closed eyes
I am the window, I am the sky—
interlude (stratus)
this time there was nothing to hide
the gray sky matched the world inside
no feeling was too strong to share
and you knew me in my naked form
it’s strange, the way we learn
to move through these structures
and yet I always still feel
like I’m coming from the outside
where I am only known
by the vista of a quiet tundra in november.
I suppose over time what changes
is not the core of ourselves but
what we yearn for, and thus
the proximity of some kind of peace—
II. watchpost
fallow field of rising dreams
tell me what it is I need
shaded tones of palest blue
open up the secret room
water held inside the clouds
I’m ready for you to fall down
blurring lines of skin and air
unhidden now with surface bared
past the skin into the bone
a compass that the marrow knows
quiet starting from inside
released into tides of the sky—
postlude (night moth)
wrap me up in sheaths of gray
waiting for another day
when the heart feels slightly stronger
and the mind a little calmer
tuck me into your thick clouds
where the world’s no longer loud
grief’s pain softening to hum
slowing now the flow of blood
like a frog under winter’s leaves
shelter is all that I need
I let the body do its work
turning over in the dirt
when I wake you’ll still be there
a balm for all that has been bared—
III. days of judgement
the contrast between
days dark and light
like the bewildering brightness
after a storm
stirs the image of my dreams
into patterns I can almost touch.
it was right in front of us
but the eyes weren’t made to see
a change so big it was all of us.
I straddle between
protectors of memory,
those dark halls of collection
and the blinding sun
of an unfamiliar fate—
IV. ghost town
I have been with the browns long enough
that I can see the colors of their undertones
this field is not a monotrope,
but a shimmer of differentiation
like a wave of a thousand droplets.
the eye adjusts to subtlety
drawn to the details of texture,
no longer backed away in defense
like when they thought a light
shined outwards from the dark pupil.
in a landscape of loss, when what
is here is all we have.
like when rain becomes air
and the molecules have more room
to move between—
— m.a.r.