dawn  

The cold light of dawn lingered reluctantly at the living room window like a sorrowful angel. Diaphanous wings wrapped around its slender form, it preferred to cast its pale, demure gaze upon the ordered streets, the tidy lawns, the well¬ behaved houses waiting in even rows for their owners to awake. The schoolyard, faintly visible through a break in the rows, echoed with the silent cries of the children that would soon pour from the yawning doors of yellow school buses. A gray-furred bandit stole across a manicured lawn, fleeing the gathering light, a choice morsel in its teeth. Beyond cold iron fences, the dead lay beneath flowered offerings, waiting patiently for loved ones who with every breath sank deeper into their own graves. A wilted flower lays herself down, sighing, dying.

The angel glanced again at the darkened window panes, illuminating the drops of dew beading on the glass, the thin mask of fog. Slowly, her gaze insinuated itself into the room, touching delicately the back of the black leather couch. I sensed its slow, inexorable progress down unto the carpeted floor. A glass, fallen on its side, the subtle marks of lipstick at the rim, emerged from the gloom. The silver face of a compact disk.

Still except for the rapid rise and fall of my chest, I lay naked on black leather. Here darkness still ruled. A candle burned on the living room table. I remembered when she lit that candle, years ago. Billi Holiday- Ella? All night it had burned, steadily, relentlessly, through the storm. I remembered how stately it had been, how tall and slender, wearing its flame like a golden crown. But the night had taken its due, and now it lay, twisted, in a pool of its own blood, pouring its last, pathetic life into a tiny, ever diminishing, ever dying, flame.

It was now bright enough that I could see the pallid sheen of sweat on my arms and legs and chest. I was shivering. My chest felt tight, and I struggled to breathe, as if the weight of my life's sins lay upon my chest. I blinked and closed my eyes. Better.

Where was she? Upstairs, perhaps? Or was she sleeping in that tangled nest of sheets barely visible by the dying candle's glare? Her subtle scent teased my senses.

I tried to speak, but barely managed a low croak. My throat was so dry. I gazed longingly at an empty bottle of white wine lying on the floor. Had it been so long ago that I had poured its heady contents into her eager mouth, and licked its coolness from her lips?

Things are different in the twilight, that ethereal realm where neither sun nor moon holds sway. Faces morph into memories, memories into dreams, and paths previously closed whisper sweet invitations. Would it perhaps had been better to wait for daylight, to burn the evidence in the harsh glare of a savage sun? Or perhaps to seek blindness in darkness, to surrender to passion and escape in oblivion?

Where is she? A white stockinged thigh. A strand of auburn hair. A bit of lace. I closed my eyes, and damned the angel of light. My eyes stung, for a moment, and I gasped in pain. Bathed in the light of day, I saw only gray.

Where is she? I saw in the graying pall that she lay on the floor beside me, a cold hand resting on my leg. I struggle to touch her, wake her from her sleep, but my limbs refuse to obey. For a brief moment the curtain parts, revealing an empty vial on the wooden table and the glimmer of steel.

Where is she? Her mouth-open. Her lips, her cheeks, her throat, dark and glistening. Her eyes...

...white...

Its misshapen form laid bare by the sunlight streaming through the window panes, the little candle sputtered, and died, as the convulsions began.

This isn't about love.

© 2006 David Juniper