Nighttime Pastime

A poor man dipped his hands into the ivory puddle.

The melted stardust was warm against his frozen fingertips,

Soft and gentle like the ashen touch of a cigarette kiss to his lips

That has long been snuffed out.

A good habit slaughtered by the tides of time,

The punishment of splitting supernovas.

.

The moon water glimmered in the bowl of his palms.

In it, he could barely see the laughing split of a familiar face

Shadowed and frowning, warped by the weight of water

And the ugly space spreading between their spirits.

His jaw clenched around swallowed words,

Words that could never break the tension of his tight-lipped sorrow.

.

Where is he?

A shadow without a man.

A story without its ghost.

Where is he, where is he, where is he?

The rhythm of my heart falters and my hands,

My hands tremble against the ticking clock

Screaming his absence through the wretched,

Empty bowels of this home!

Where is he?

.

Where is he?

.

Misplaced in the river.

Tormented by the absence, the mirror which refuses to show

Desperate eyes rimmed red and the scratch of stubble,

The marks of misery carved into his features.

He is punished, pounding against his prison with sand

Stuck between his toes and bubbles pouring from his mouth.

.

He slams against the glass,

Horrified by the tears of his lover joining the ivory ocean.

Weeping, screaming, and wailing

He reaches strong hands out but cannot grasp him,

Cannot soothe the trails of tears rolling down those pale cheeks.

Cannot caress the shadowed jaw chewing on unsaid pains.

.

It aches in his chest, the sight of this man, his man, shaking beneath the

Ugly weight of the fabricated sins pinned to the trapped man’s chest.

So, he screams into the white nothingness hoping someday

It will splinter into dust and he will be free

To hold and love and kiss away the unjust grief.

His cries dance like feathers in the moonlight.

.

I’m here!

I see you, I hear you, I feel every missed beat of your heart

And taste the metal in your mouth

When you wake from screaming my name.

I curl beside you in your sleep, walk through the corridors with you

Silently. Screaming. Screaming so loud

And you can never hear me,

But hear me! I am here! Always here.

.

Always here.

Always silent.

.

The trapped man screams and screams, weeping when his lover

Dips his fingers back into the pond with a whisper.

.

I am always here, loving you.

.

The first rays of sunshine have come.

Pulling a film of yellow over the ivory, they have ruptured

What little serenity the two have come to create

During this decade-old, nighttime pastime.

Watching the last palmful of liquid shimmer, the kneeling man slurps

And swallows down warm hope that tonight will be the night

That the looking glass fractures.

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Silver Serpent Books

Nathalie Daux

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