The tavern is rowdy as ever. Drunkards, nobles, politicians and scum all mingling. Whispering. Trading secrets and coin and cons. Huddling together in conspiratorial groups, the comings and goings of Stragosa muffled by the songs of the bards in black, the Beggar Kings, regaling the lot of them with tales collected, dreamt, and conscripted. Music: the memory of the land.
B
This song is a good song
and
I see you grin, despite yourself.
For a moment they see me. See us.
For a moment none of it happened.
The fire is warm on my face
I feel the bench under me
Solid
Grounding
I taste the lust
Dancing at the corners of my mouth
Our skin is hot, alive
Our hearts skip
Skip
skipping
across the veil between here
And there
Here
now
In this single moment
I am home
F
I find you flickering here
You are almost
The color
Of living.
Living is
Sharp and grating–
Against the cool
The calm and the dreary
That is death but then
There’s you.
Infatuated with a song
That remembers us
And smiling
Like you were always wont to do.
Smiles are cheaper
Now
Somehow
And even in death
You are beautiful when infatuated.
Such as was
Always between us–
Sharp and stretched and scratched
Though sometimes tender–
No longer can I expect
The warmth
Of blood
Under the skin
We are nothing
And I reach out to touch you
As I had never had the chance
Before.
I like it here
With you
I long
For your eyes
To remember me
As they
Remember
Our names.
B
And the world is electric now
Beautiful fire from my fingertips to my teeth
Your eyes are so much more blue than they once were
I fall into them like the well of the sky
And then
I see a girl
Younger than most
In the corner of the tavern
And her eyes are mooney wide
I wave at her
And her lips part
In breathless
Awe
I see your eyes catch hers
Watch your expression shift
And shimmy
Like a cat
With too many fleas
F
I toss a wink like a coin
And gaping she gasps and blinks
And rubs the phantoms from her eyes–
We are gone.
And turning to smile this smile
Hard and bitter won
On you
I rise.
What freedom in Death, no?
Words are not words
And there is no breath here–
Nor gravity to hold me down
And my feet dangle
Toes
Inches
Above the table.
Stretching hands to you
Like olive branches–
How we fought in life
Like mutts over bitches in heat
But here–
I never got to dance with you.
Show me how you dance to our song.
B
And my grin goes walrus wide
I take your hand
In my hand
And my hand
In yours
And
And
And
We waltz the uppercut tango
And foxtrot through the fox’s den
I am you and you are mine
In this night sings
The Wet divine
This dance
Which is our first dance
It would have gone differently
Had we been constrained by meat
And Physics
F
Such things we are
Beyond
The dead Undying
Tossed in stormy skies
And howling
It’s not
So bad
Here
I can almost feel
Your hands
In on around tightly gripping
Mine.
How easy to
Collapse
Together
Where the music swells us up on drifting winds
I wish
I wish
I wish we had–
Oh well.
I can now
Lay my head
On your shoulder
And breathe in
This gentle crook of your neck.
B
And as we drift
Sideways and upwards
In this place
That is Stragosa
And is the black and starry sea
I hear the chords fading
And applause beginning to thunder thump
From below
I barely notice the tavern drifting away
A half remembered dream
From a life I no longer live
I hold you tight
My lioness
And our skin forgets how to be skin
We become
What all lovers would be
If they were not told
They had to be two
Instead of one
My heart and
Your heart
Beat
F
And beat–
Like living drums beat
We two
Dancing out of realm of gods
And beggars and kings–
B
And beat
Like wings beat
Into the sky and into dark
we fall
Careening up
B+F
What a brilliant fall it is
Of whorling clouds and singing seas
And dreaming dreams
Alive–
Are we alive?
Alive….
Alive as the storm sweeping the city
Alive as the wind tugging playful at trees
Alive as raindrops wetting knees
Bent in the grass to recover some overlooked treasure–
Alive as deer tip-toeing through brush
Alive
Alive
Alive as
Unseen night
I look to my hand and it is your hand
I hear my laugh
And it is your laugh
And know that skin
No longer contains the idea
That is us
Trees and rivers pass beneath
Millers, blacksmiths, bards
Each taking their path through the night
And we look down
And feel
The slow and ancient
thrum
Of the world
This place is our place now
The dark seas of unmaking
Will have to wait
Death is a forgetting
And we
Will not be forgot.
