1. A thready pulse; the silken blue line beneath the skin of your wrist telling us your heart is unravelling. How is it that we can’t thread this needle? The vein on the back of your hand shuts its eyes every time we try. The gown, unholy, scant cover for the ceremony.
2. Tuning the guitar to open G, getting it just so. I hear your ghost shimmering through overtones rising off the soundboard, dust rising off the neck; I saw how it broke your heart to no longer have the strength to try. Did you know I did it for your smile, all my practice and play? Gone now, the crown of callus on my fingertips, it’s been that long.
3. A coffee cup, full of DnD dice. Also in the cup: two pair of scissors; two hand-blown perfume bottles no bigger than my thumb, one broken. O undrinkable memory, to find me so parched my lips can’t mouth a blessing, afraid as I am to try my luck, to cut the blossom from its branch, fill what’s fragile with joy.
4. Your practice, those occult beliefs, kept you scrying the flame of your life, writing and reading sigils as if a surety, a bond for meaning. Yet when it all went south, dear, you had me and my love, enough to trim your nails, check for open sores on your feet; even unstrung, you sang to me, instar to eclose to instar.
5. The direct path isn’t for me. It’s the detour, the bend in the road I long for, but now I need to bring back a tale beyond my horizon. I find a ball of red string that’s infinitely long, tie an end to the First Tree and set off. How else could I find my way back, past the bend in an aorta, a thready pulse, the scars upon our hearts?
. . .
To learn more about the new poetic form, the cadralor, see Gleam.
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