The Strings of Night

Strings

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Wrapped around his fingertips,

Digging trenches along his corded neck,

They squeeze until pink turns red and red bows

To violet and the little pieces,

The fragments he believed would war for eternity

Tessellate.

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Twine lies at his feet.

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It moves with the shadows crawling up exposed skin,

Sneaking through the dark forest of hair

And into sacred spaces as it laces itself across the vast,

Empty ocean of white.

It pulls slanted kneecaps painted with scars wide

Until they fall to dark vulnerability.

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Pale lips bleat.

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The string winds tighter, slithering across hollow hip bones,

Dipping into the valley of each rib until it can lick searing memories

Along the underbelly of his collarbones.

He writhes and whines as ocherous flames flicker warm light

Across the contracting muscles, the hands balled into fists

Gripping nothing but cool, damp air kissing across his belly

With the heavy insistence of spring mold.

.

Tears slip to silk, evaporate from moon-kissed skin.

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They trail glittering salt in their wake.

A stark contradiction to the honey leaking from his spirit,

Salt crystals trail fingernails down his sides in red lines.

Catch on the raised flowerbed of scars,

An intricate history of his agony, the toll of a mistake.

The map of sentimentality shudders beneath the touch of tears.

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A single cry cracks like lightning through the darkness.

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The strings ratchet tighter while pained whimpers fall

To empty, unused pillows.

It is never fair, never just, never beautiful the way he dreamt

But it is there, cuddling on the periphery, begging to come home.

The strings tighten impossibly, fraying in the middle until they snap.

Turning rapidly to powder as they disintegrate, the remnants of string

Lift to the dark, unused corners of the room.

His heart halts its easy rhythm and the breath grows stale in his lungs.

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And then, he has arrived.

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The weight, familiar on his chest and crushing against his thighs,

Has returned to him. Fingers nest in the raven hair and red rose lips

Leave petals across the winter skin.

The smell of petrichor and the early blooming flowers of the forest

Drown him completely until he is whispering weepy,

Wanton desires into the mess of brown hair. Unbidden.

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I’m here, the lips whisper. I’m here now.

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The emptiness has been banished by the shadow sliding

Into the cracks, murmuring soft words of praise and forgiveness

Against chapped lips.

He screams, quiets, and mewls

As in summer eyes something sparks to life, jumps from

The presence haunting his room into his abyss-black eyes.

Obsidian cracks and the molten core flows again.

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Clenched fists open, wildly grasping at him as he cries.

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Poison slips into his blood, twists his vision until reality snaps

And suddenly, he is caught in the snowfall of a full moon.

Light streams through cavernous windows and skips stones

Across his skin like the fingertips dancing across shoulder blades

And the cool contours of his back rubbed raw from the twining

Rope grounding him, tying him to the trees before he thinks

To join the twinkling sky.

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He pulls taut, waiting for the sky to blink.

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Fear hot and insistent smears crimson down his cheeks

And neck in splotchy handprints as his breath stutters,

Stops, and starts again with a pleading whine.

The world flashes white behind his eyelids as pricks

Of feral dreams and desires bit across sensitive skin,

Ignite in fireballs on the tip of his tongue occupied

With satin words and silver promises slipping from him.

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I will find you again, the words press into memory.

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The words leap from hand to hand, a gift given and received

On warm puffs of breath as the world creaks, tilts, and fractures.

The rope disintegrates leaving warm handprints in its wake,

Fingers squeezing and digging bruises into white dreams,

Building bold bridges from fantasy to actuality.

He bucks and bows and cries as the weight shifts,

Then lifts into the vast expanse of stars above.

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Forgiven.

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Lightning cracks at the base of his spine travelling northward

With alarming speed as it consumes every thought,

Every breath, every heartbeat with wild, errant magic.

White rivers of raining clouds flow deep, coursing through canyons

And gathering where the logs and mushrooms sleep.

The shadow above grows heavy as the twine vanishes.

A heartbeat thumps against his chest out of time with his own, alive.

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Breath ghosts across his lips as the body shifts against him.

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Strings, he mutters into the night, into warm flesh.

Our bridge, the voice of the shadow mutters, for now.

Cold arms cinch around his body and for a moment,

The world holds its breath as it realigns itself.

But the moment passes when the sun touches the sky

And the body in his arms goes cold with a fading apology

Before turning into a pile of strings again,

Resting in the hollow of his belly carved by missed meals

And the drain of a broken heart, a dying soul.

.

Empty. Empty again.

- Nathalie Daux

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