Solstice

During the ritual there was a reading of 35,000 syllables, taking seven hours to pass. Over its course, the vacant, high-wire star grew achingly thin, until at last the lynching thread snapped and the orb sank like a chore into the ocean. The sky above looked as if we stood in the heart of an heirloom, and thinking it would collapse in on itself at any moment, the man in the moon turned to bury his eyes into what bent elbow of space he could find, as he refused to witness our ruin. The eclipse fell on the circumcision of two local boys. What could we do but wince at their cries and press our bodies together with the weight of wet clay? The two of us were left not even enough light to trace our footsteps back in the nocturne of equatorial jungle. Along the way we followed the sound of each other’s breath until we fell over two forgotten corpses, a Sumatran tiger and his tigress. We were honored as it happened, to have met such sought creatures, even in their deaths, and stood over them like candles of ice waiting for the rot.