Spring

Still-Life with Interior

16 Still-Life with Interior When steep in pitch I dolorous cry out and wake from the can’t-be of some feverinduced dream, some warped confluence of seared images, lost entities—the sound: sudden and strange, as if a stolen voice lived to shriek in me, white-knuckled and bent to harbor wildness, tooth and growl. It bristles out camaraderie, though what’s to say its sadness, rage aren’t mine as lethally. All is black and blank at bedside. Another human creature lies in line beside and breathes as I breathe, our exhales rising in obelisks that mark our sleep to those who pass invisibly— Mourners from another world. Hush. Let them to our remnant days submit their tears, coveting an hour, an instant to re-live. For they feel nothing now. I waver in the waking dream, a phantom to myself, unlit. And swear again: if I can weather yet another sleepless night, this banishment from all serenity, in morning, I’ll amalgamate the primal thing to me, hold it still in Āre till molten it form itself to shape beneath my skin; against. ...