The stories spin, warp and weft through holes in a tablet, in my memory, others’ fingers spelling ram’s-horn patterns, the horn a reminder of the communal breath we no longer share. Tell me a story about a weaver, I asked the wind. “Only that a spider dropped its thread, too heavy with ash to sieve for flies.” This fire season, I see hummingbirds rising like sparks, their nests dusted with soot from those webs.
Lead Mines, Clough, Rivington UK, Gary Gray, Date Unknown
The excavation’s long since stalled out. Digging the sough, I mean. “To mine the lead, we need to draw the water table down, to draw the water down we need to dig, but the picks were left behind, were lost, and so am I.” There’s a shallow ditch, or the shape left behind where you fell. Oh. Oh. This geology, these mines, clay under my fingernails that smells like the last kiss I gave you—atop your head as you dozed at the computer, blue-gray light from the screen like a caul, wrapping us both. But I left the room to go to bed, and you, my dear, fell, then crawled, then left, and still I can’t drain this sough.
