shayna ♡’s Reviews > Faithful and Virtuous Night > Status Update

Under the full moon
Maria was folding the washing;
the stiff sheets became
dry white rectangles of moonlight.

Mother died last night,
Mother who never dies.

Winter was in the air,

had not my brother always been steering,
both himself and me, out of our bleak bedroom
into a night of rocks and lakes
punctuated with swords sticking up here and there—

The sky was black. The earth was white and cold.

My birthday (I remember) is fast approaching.
Perhaps the two great moments will collide
and I will see my selves meet, coming and going—
Of course, much of my original self
is already dead, so a ghost would be forced
to embrace a mutilation.

(From page 21)

Above our heads, the cherry blossoms had begun
to loosen in the night sky, or maybe the stars were drifting,
drifting and falling apart, and where they landed
new worlds would form.

Silence had entered me.
It was like the night, and my memories— they were like stars
in that they were fixed, though of course
if one could see as do the astronomers
one would see they are unending fires…

These were the moments I lived for.
I was, I felt, mysteriously lifted above the world
so that action was at last impossible
which made thought not only possible but limitless.

(Cont)

The night progressed. Fog
swirled over the lit bulbs.
I suppose that is where it was visible;
elsewhere, it was simply the way things were,
blurred where they had been sharp.

I shut my book.

The streetlights were coming on,
lining the sides of the river.
The offices were going dark.
At the river's edge,
fog encircled the lights;
one could not, after a while, see the lights
but a strange radiance suffused the fog,
its source a mystery.

(Cont next update)

so I assumed there would be, at some point,
a door with a glittering knob,
but when this would happen and where I had no idea.