I hanged from that tree for years. Longer than the magic would allow. In the gray and in the green, my being ruffled through like a pocketed pick of cards. The redeal is still in the works. The old ways always have a say, in our breath and bones and words run astray. The meaning moves around a lot, the gods aren’t who they say they are, the names got it all wrong. You called me up, you cut me down. The forest is all a whisper. The world is turning fast.
So we trail our shadows. So we gather our dead. My father’s ghost in my father’s house, his grave three thousand miles and going. The shape of thoughts left as shelves, as plotted fence and trained vine. My mother’s life all glimmer and dwindle like the stars just turned out by the dusk, this house full of bad dreams and detritus, this house of years long gone. It took a while to learn that living in a tomb isn’t being interred in one. It took awhile for the magic to do the math.
I can not say what the world is intending. I will not speak of other’s duties or their days. The moon has drawn her bow, pacing your fickle heavens. The night is loosed, sparkling and hiding, streaking up the sky. The rhythm there, heart and breath and the wheel of life. The fire there as you breathe in, the machine turning over in the language of stunned stone and flummoxed water, grace flowing between the gleaned powers and the acknowledged appetites. I fall in step with the dance and the night, knowing no lore. Just words and names, and the ache that endures.
