Always, the us

You know, on dank cold nights, like someplace faraway, someplace where it always rains, someplace there is always this moisture hanging in the air, from where you just cannot wring it out like water from fresh washing, the place where we then huddle and pool out centre all our piles of dry twigs, humble fruits of our toil, where we inspect them for the driest ones and we chuck the not so dry ones out, and where we then look around for who might have the splint that evening, and we find that someone does, and we huddle closer at the fireplace, and watch with a pang of craving that splint being struck, we see the pithy sparks birth, like the false, debased child of lightening, and we gouge with hungry eyes the sight of the tiniest flicker of orange-red glow and how it latches onto the twigs, the flame racing for their time-frozen hearts, and the gentle cackle, oh the gentlest of all cackles that ruptures into the night, like the pattering feet of rats scurrying under the floorboards.

You know, on dank cold nights, the solace of that cackle of splinters at that heart of the huddle, that cherished memory of times overcome, would be just as nought as either of us, if there wasn’t an us in the first place, sticking it with that gleaming dank demon of the night.

(Penned March 7, 2011)