"The light is bright," said Evangeline. "It radiates through everything. I am awake. The top of my mind extends upward. For the first time I see the faintest shadows that obscure in clumps like a living flitting screen between myself and light. We are defined by light. My skin absorbs it. Our eyes swallow it and send it to the mind. What can I see with the eyes? Can I sift the light from shadow? Maybe if my heart thumps faster, if my components begin to tremble - the back of my skull strains, my ears pop - then the whole world would crackle and split.

"What would they look like? These beings around me, unsheathed of this - I know not what, but this - we retain our bodies, but NOT... not this. The page before me becomes whiter; I scarcely notice the floor, black and solid. There is a blue glove dangling from the handle on the window like the outside twilight gathering in. The blackboard is smudged ferociously - it tangles my perception and sinks in my gut."

"I am humility," said Moriah. "We are buried here, in the earth. We live each moment; we either move or we don't; we conflict with each other and define our shape."

"I pretend to be a child," said Evangeline. "I smile and step lightly and quickly. Perhaps it is best that they perceive me that way, so that they will accept and allow my presence. I wish only to escape. I have glimpsed the boxes and bones and I have no desire for them. I watch Moriah drag her feet in the dust. I love her, thus I understand. But Walker presses me - I cannot understand unless I feel the dirt beneath my nails. I have no desire for the grime but I land because of the set of his shoulders. His blades are set."

.

descended, they have
their careful white umbrellas and compassion-
ate black microphones and the rotunda shrouded
columns pressed like pins through the map: "here"

"violent," i hear between the crunch
of pebbles between cobblestones
his eyebrows are slanted in practiced
concern
the sun burns its way under his skin

i didn't mean to, he told them when they found him
alone, perhaps, crying, perhaps
crouching in the dark that wound its way around and around
the doorknob that turned until it drilled a hole
through her bedroom door but his leg
is scratched and there are splinters
and his face so recently boyish now sunk
into jawlines and hollows and black pools
spilling at the edges

i didn't mean to kill Love
i didn't mean to kill her.


--

in memory of yeardley love,
and all hearts broken by her passing






pray for george huguely, her murderer, that he will not be lost