Viscous Memories

Viscous Memories

When we first met, I did not see your face.

Like an incensed mutt barking at the moon, streaks of wanton fire—flickering fingers harassing midnight’s hazy zephyrs—rose to the sky out of our own trees, and through the smoke and pernicious treachery of the once verdant woods I could not catch a glimpse of you. Strange to this heart, you had hoisted me above the muck below, and for a while I could touch the rough winds blowing from the solipsistic pyre. All too soon, though, you had to fall as well, just as the trees did. Smoldering in the churlish grip of these licentious flames, we curled into underbrush rife with the corpses of saplings, victims of the undulating rage. “Will we be consumed as well?” I heard once, but reminiscing, I know not whether it was you or I who spoke it. Just because you were foreign did not stop me from cleaving to you, and deceitful waters trickled down my cheeks, betraying how corrupt with fear I was. But I did gaze at the diaphanous horizon past the billowing heat and gray, a sight pleasing to my dying eye (for thicker still the haze of torrid smoke grew). The sky was pale and innocent to our strife, and nascent morning would soon caress the scarred earth below. Already obvious was our mortal death, to join the other bones in this open murder, but sleeping till eternity seemed mad to me. Clawing past the bark protruding from the marred land, I escaped my somnolent end. Gales blew me back, though, to you again, and remembering my debt, I heaved you out with me. After cringing through the searing existence, we breached the ridge of the desecrated woods, collapsing into an impassive coma. Begotten of life, we were all that remained of the maelstrom.

Then it was that I saw your face, turned coal-flushed by the inferno, and I mused that I should like to sleep past this vexing dream.