(no subject)

[jholloway.livejournal.com]

Not paying attention: sounds slide over you, familiar / head up, what was that? Such bad pronunciation
I don't understand
I don't

and then fire / scream / joyful shout / flash

and then nothing

and for a moment, the old days
the black water, sinking
the cold that steals the feeling from hands and lips
eyes wide, gunbarrel black: who did this?

who took you from me?

Carl: broken and shaken / eyes soft / blood on his hand / no comfort
Bernard: doesn't know / not possible

the note / what she says / what she doesn't say / so her even now

all this time, like a sickness, always the thing that stood between us
one way or another, always her first love: religion.

gunbarrel eyes on some non-existent goddess: laugh aloud
how you would have laughed at me / and I laugh harder

and home among the gifts you left me / so small in comparison to the big one
and the dizzying heat of your work on my tongue and throat
raise a glass to you / and smile, weeping
and you are never gone from me