The Tether

He missed the chair and hit the floor,

Head knocking against the wood polished with dust.

Darkness, dusk, night fell across his form,

Chest rising quickly and falling slowly

As glassy green eyes gazed at the dim embers

Of a fire long untended to.

.

He always tended the fire better than me.

.

It was a lone, dismal thought that shook

With the power only grief could conjure inside him.

Tears welled, slipped and fell down his cheeks,

Tumbling over their clumsy grief as the fire blurred.

He was beginning to forget him.

Beginning to lose the little details that made love potent.

.

I haven't dreamt about you in weeks.

.

What a fickle measure of time, days and weeks,

When minutes and seconds captured the agony

Of his separation so much better.

The millions of heartbreaks between then and now

Were as honest as the inches between

Whichever universe he had vanished off to and this one.

.

Bookends to the cosmos with millions of pages in between.

.

Eyes darkening with anguish glazed as the tears

Wet the wood and bounced in the dust.

He couldn't see the other side of the shelf

For there were too many pages separating him

From the stardust, the soul, the man that was his lover

And no amount of bending the cosmos would fix it.

.

But rules break, don't they?

.

There had been a time, back when the sun was bright

And the moon smiled instead of wept from pity,

When he had been good at breaking the rules,

Good at bending them.

Wonderful at getting his way.

Perfect at slipping through the cracks.

.

So why can't I find you in my sleep?

.

Was there nothing left to find?

The days were getting long now, the drugs cheap and easy.

He stirred on the floor, breath puffing loudly

Across the jagged silence of the room.

Palm open against the floor, he searched for the housebeat,

The delicate magic pumping through the walls.

.

You're not gone yet, are you?

.

Magic bled across the stars, across the black, across the emptiness.

It looped around his belly,

Cinched tight like a belt when he wanted to cave.

That magic was in the house, in the floor, the carpet, the table.

It was inside him.

Green eyes blinked and the dreary grey of winter disintegrated.

.

I can still feel you, wherever you are and wherever I am.

.

It wasn't going to fade because magic was a rugged sort of thing,

A vase he could drop down a flight of stairs and pick up whole.

Wind whispered through the gaps in the house at once

And he could hear his name across its currents

Spoken in the same low, dulcet tones of his lover.

The fire flashed and then roared to life.

.

There is no space that could silence you, is there?

.

A warm, ocherous glow exploded across the room

Casting its light across the slim body on the floor.

Heat flooded him and the frost in his veins crept back

To the grieving prison in his chest.

Standing slowly as the world swayed around him,

The man placed a hand on his abdomen and sighed.

.

I am tethered to you. For now. For always.

.

Cold air swept around his ankles,

Stirred the dust on the floor and brushed it into the flames.

It wouldn't last long, magic never did.

Capturing a split log in his hand, he approached the fire

Tentatively as though it would bite, and whispered,

"I'll tend to the fire..."

.

So don't let me fly too far away.

______________________________

This is another one that's part of a bigger series. See the others below. This actually my current favorite project and it has a spot near and dear to my heart. :)

The Strings of Night

Obsidian Water

The Cottage Window

Nighttime Pastime