Member-only story
Heart Murmurs
After poisoning him with words
Man and mist and dog and fog;
my winter-of-the-heart hideaway.
I stop, wake up and sleep again.
Clouds disguise this fall
into the past,
as surely as the grave betrays
the rule of days
where seabirds land
everyday, this sheer cliff path
crumbles, just a little more.
I listen to these screeched warnings of the gulls,
echoing through this thin air.
Seeing you here shimmering,
glistening, as all light fades
into a sky of pure-pink chiaroscuro.
Blotches of an adamantine brittleness
spread slowly all over this Cheshire plain,
all over the acres and acres of rich pickings,
as the quarter moon is waxing to the right,
behind my back and out of sight
a grove of black, spidery trees
skeletal and strange
put me in mind of an MR James ghost story
of the forever unrequited remonstrance
of a love that stands on this broken, shaky ground.
