number 465

The fire drawing a line across me parting my body, picketing my soul, so that only my blood dares cross. Who is watching to see if that blood stops sharing its life with both sides of the line. No one. Alone I stand feeling my insides drain. Against my skin the wind pricks raising goose bumps along my surface. How will I live? How will I die? From both I crave those lights that flicker from tree tips to roof tops. And in my final moments the breach between memories come gathering in bursts rather than sequence. I see the witnesses in the room scolding me, my king throwing me from his lap because I race a train across his chest. Notes from napkin used for when words when anger is slapped against my brother’s face. I see games being played in the fragmented bits of my yard. Games my adult self shuns to remember. A fly buzzing killing more of me than I thought it should. Cloak and dagger. In and out. My mother pushing me into a stream; the chill threatening death nearer to me. And yet from the cushion of cliffs my mind rests thinking of the lights flickering in the dark, casting shadows that forever change. Why must this be the last for me? My keepsakes signed, rotted away. One last onset. Interposed with the queen, and I cannot see to see.