sometimes the radio plays a familiar song and it feels like your own funeral bell tolling. nothing has changed, except the sky is bigger. nothing has changed, except you can sleep through the night now.
uncertainty has her name. it was spring when you emerged from beneath the earth, summer when you finally stopped dreaming about her voice. seeds remember where they came from. her yellow-emerald eyes, beryl-bright, singing
no song of gentleness, but you forgave her every time. this is the only love you ever knew. the only words you ever learned how to speak. the only dream you ever swam through, bitter blue and antiseptic white.
she loved you in those dreams. baptized you in fire just to see how you would burn. and you burned for her. you burned
endlessly. you fell, her wings a wreck of melted wax and embers around you. now, you stand in a field, and the birds tumble one by one into your waiting hands. their hollow bones remind you of her song. the gentle brutality of their necks snapping under your fingers reminds you of her kindness.
there is a darkness beneath the earth where she waits for you to return.
sunset, or only in dreams // a.s.w.
