forget the facts we know
Saturday, October 31st, 2009For just this night, I want us to forget the facts we know. I want the clock to stretch twelve midnight to thirteen, the wind to blow from a direction our compass and our plumb line cannot find.
Halloween was delivered to us, a relic in a box of ash. We burned the witches to fill it.
There is smoke on the wind. It may be chimneys, it may be sacrificial pyres, it may be the forest burning. There is a smell we call fresh but comes from the decay of leaves. There is a smell like mercury, like amnesia, the wind has blown over a lake that is cursed and it has brought a mist into our nostrils. I am happy to forget everything I can.
The world is bereft of understanding or of expectations that are sane. There is a rainbow around the moon. There are songs that summon ghosts, and songs that send them away. Your flute is made of bone. Your perfume has the bottom tone of rot and the top of apricots and sage. It does not matter what happens in an hour that does not exist. It matters more than anything what happens in an hour that does not exist.
I want us to take laurel and peyote, to touch and see each other just enough to share the hallucination. I want us to look back at the world from the other side and to kiss like it is a ceremony the spirits invented in order to feel mortal.
And if the night is over and my memory has not come back, that hour is all I want to keep.
