Somewhere in the eigengrau hour, between the scream of a night terror and the sigh of a post mortem body, the cicadas stilled in a birth— stilled in the desiccation of a wound. In their absence, or rather from it, I took up a hum—my cells regenerating and calling to their familiar. In the Devil’s Hour, I heard a seat being taken, and I rolled to the ghost—I spiraled into the fugue. A slip of the tongue—No—A slip of the blade, beckoned me forth from the vapor state of thought. A kitchen…wood grain…paring knife…stainless steel reflection—I painted my blood across the glyphs and stitched my deeper self shut. The hum still creates—still deteriorates—my liberation. I lose myself on concrete and coffee— a straightaway dead ends with brick and mortar, columns and corners. In the shadows, his cigarette scissor fingers, his disheveled, bloodied apron— a butcher sends up smoke signals. I lower my hood, keeping my eyes on his, hiding neither scar, nor thread that lace my neck and face— I make holy, rites with a ceremony of feral instincts—a berserker—internally I'm at war. A second thought—a second glance—I turn toward, and he’s missed nothing, collecting my tells—my intimacy—all with merely his stance and eyeline. Marigolds bloom from my mouth, ruffled manes of sunlight, a dance of skirts masking my misdeeds, but they don’t fool the butcher—who recites an elegy in soft brogue. You know // Aye The hum bursts the dam, a full blown commotion, chaos and communication—I’m lightning he’s caught in a bottle—I’m no longer impossible—I’m incredible
E.A. O'Connell
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