The Cottage Window

Red-rimmed eyes green as midnight grass brightened

Despite the shadow clinging to the glassy gaze.

Reality slipped like continental plates,

Grinding free with a pop that echoed in his mind.

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He was tired enough to make out the fuzzy shape

Of grey stones weathered black and mossy

Hugging one another with ancient mortar.

Tired enough that here and there blurred.

Between the lines, he could see him.

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The young man kissed his elbows to his knees

As the slack muscles in his back when rigid.

The man slouched at a table behind the window was,

Without any tingle of doubt, the man he'd lost.

It was him between the window panes.

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Creaking bones bowed beneath the weight of sorrow.

Familiar black hair once sleek, now long and untamed

By the fingers of loss and grief,

Curtained around the sides of the long face.

A sour expression twisted his lips.

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The table beneath his hands made the man,

Peeping through the still waters of his soul, sob.

It was scratched and burned and cracked.

As broken as the man sitting at it, weeping into his hands.

The wood marked his absence as well as the tears.

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They had once dined and laughed and loved at that table,

Told jokes and argued with knives and magic.

They ran wet towels across its surface each night

And polished out the smallest wounds in the morning.

His heart stuttered as he witnessed the sight.

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Stuttered, then broke. Exploded between his ribs.

Deflated, withered at the sight of seeing the lost man this way.

Brought to his knees like this,

In front of the empty chair, his empty chair. Abandoned.

The one still pulled out as though he could return.

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He couldn't return, couldn't fill that chair,

Couldn't make the lost man know he remembered.

The pretty days with clear skies and orange sunsets

That warmed the upstairs room.

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I want to come home.

To the fire mindlessly burning reduced to ash.

To the smell of stew and wine and the ink on your cuffs.

To the wooden table we built.

To everything in that cottage, nothing more so than you.

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To grassy knolls dancing like waves in the wind

And the beautiful, rainy nights sprinting back

Grinning, laughing, living the magic together.

Coming home to a table decorated in parchment.

The smell of stew simmering.

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But he couldn't.

The stew had gone rotten long ago, sitting on some back shelf

Beneath the snowy fuzz of what had been an orange.

He was trapped in the shackles of some dungeon,

Pushed into a reality to atone for existing.

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To atone. To die. To perish alone, forgotten, and useless.

A punishment for no crime.

The image of the man wobbled and fell apart.

It was over and the man hung his head.

A fraction more desperate and worlds more alone.

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Silver Serpent Books

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Hello, all! This poem comes in a series of others now. They're to be read in particular order (yet) and will someday be published in a poetry book following these two men around through their mysterious lives.

Please read the others if you like this!

Obsidian Water

B O O T S

The Strings of Night

Nighttime Pastime