This parchment has shredded beneath my fingers. I can remember it. I can still feel the pieces fall apart, damp and sticky, clingy and without form.
Yet here it is, and my blood is no longer splashed across the lines, no longer burning through the words.
There are no words, but the pen is in my hand, its quill razor-sharp, and the paper quivers masochistically.
I paste images of the winter to cover it, hide the sun-yellowed lines and dust. The snow collects dirt, the washed up grime of city sins, and I trace angels out around my translucent figure.
“They’re just images,” the dead reflections whisper to me. I hear them cackle with my voice, and I wonder who made whom. A baby chick fresh from the egg, cursed, a frozen body with a future forged in the ice.
“Let me whisper,” she begs. Her eyes speak it all- she begs him to leave, but closes the shutters, looks away. Just come back to me. The words sting with the commonality.
The time ticks on. The hour hands of the clock have the sharpest blade, writing out the letters the pen was too afraid to speak. And each bloom the flower puts forth measures another flake of snow.
Somewhere, it’s summer now.
But here and now, to leave the fire of blood and friendship, love and lust, is to freeze in the drifts of eternity.
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