xryatl

it was an enchanted winter that year, under some old crone's last spell, snow one day and summer the next, leaving the heaped white confused enough to melt into parody of itself, as she got younger and younger on the fat of ridiculous circumstances. i remember that winter, that winter makeup-compacts became ashtrays, redheads became indian girls, and memory reeled to sequence a life. That winter the old precious things wanted to sleep in cardboard, dreamily lusted for mothballs, even the musicbox from holland and the inherited birthday pearls, wanting to go inside and be forgotten until the lift and sun of some other era woke them. (but not the teapot which, kneeling in the bathtub, poured new water over our soapy skin, helping to figure out the places neglected by nature because of the curves of our own body).
that winter we did our tarot spread on the floor while you played chess.
we thought of the summer's two, almost garrish, giggling aunties, gray-haired and magical. they could have shared one eye, and we may not have noticed. her gray eminated from the center part of her head, as if only order could spawn age...but it disappeared if the hair was tousled.

that winter, when a gentle wind probed the door and physics acquiesced, we thought always that someone was there and peered at the phantom-laden air with curiosity. we felt something coming.
it was a superstitious time. numinous in its absurdity. a time that needed to rely on something for support in reality, but that something was too finicky to be reliable. a specter something, indefinate at best, at worst ghoulish.
that winter our socks and underwear were the most colorful things we wore, as if we had a secret we were barely keeping, which was creeping out of the puritan black that kept us grounded and severe. we wanted to tell our gaudy secrets, didn't we, but we didn't know who to tell them to and we were very discriminating confiders during that season of mischief.