I.
The dark is rolling ahead to chase daylight and leaves us alone and drowning. The surface above pulls the cover over our naked caskets. Good night, it hums. We sink under the carpet. Around us the sharp bat-like birds, or they could be bats but the blind evening has little regards for the specifics, swerve recklessly catching the insects that have come to claim us. Have they come to save us?
II.
It is easy to drift into sleep pressed against the warm earth like that. We could close our eyes and play pretend. Construct that little room dark enough to hide our fears and all ten of our fingers tickling our face. We are all fingerless, let us pretend, and unable to unravel the brown string and delicate paper package and the gift from the future.
In this dark room I might light a match, only if I am promised a view of the circle of armchairs and everyone lounging in them, unmoving and exactly as I remember them. We can pick up where we left off. You can doze off in the back while I drive us recklessly around nowhere in search of the landmark or the tree that says Turn Right here to revisit that piece of land or memory. The match will go out. Time is up and we are restored to familiarity.
III.
We have been doing nothing for too many days. The idleness is filling my mind with your face.
IV.
The stars are back. The cold is also, unfortunately, back. We must have learnt to hibernate by now and slept through the metal branding our skin and the one truth we mixed into the string of lies we tell one another. No matter. Everything is still important and I hold onto this so I may return here again, to the quiet nights and sea breeze up North, to the mind-numbing idleness and the feeling of drowning. If I returned and found the snug fit when I curl up in this spot of time, I will be so grateful you kept it that way I might cry.
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