67th of Winter
Empty were the strides, freshly split leather sole and a wobbly heel. They clunked, scraped over dirty shards of clay. The clack of a shutter, rusty hinge giving way, rose louder for an instant as it evoked a dog’s howl from the gutter’s impregnable layers of refuse. The rats were quieter. They scurried from cracks, beady red eyes and coarse dark fur, while quieter yet, hideously bloated worms converged on scraps of gray, rotting flesh from the mongers. They fought with the chitinous warders, tiny beetles with horns sprouting crazily from carapaces that’d disgraced their luster. The grubs didn’t care. Their lot was in richly turned soil. Their enemy the spade. There were no trundling carts, traces hauled by a desultory mule, nor the leak of wine soaked despair. The forges weren’t yet roused, a hushing of ashes over embers. The clank of an automaton.
This was a vagary of night, and leadenly over jet sky draped the dust of dreams. The laces of drool staying fidgety lips, grit in the crease of an eye. The sprawl of blankets tangled sweaty limbs, drying seed at the hairy fat junctures of thighs. There were others without blankets. They were fitful, slumped by canvas awnings, splintery barrel staves along the ridge of a cheek and dankly brown coating of leaves under skinny rears. The sadly swaying sag of a head, vainly seeking to creep under a swell of rigid clavicle as might a tortoise. They always rose with a glacial sigh, a shiver. The feral eyes tightly cinched, as if fearing the nightmare of day more than the nightmare of night.
Empty, crunching over creeping slimy snails.
The swirl of furs, and onward through chimera. The molten daze of summer long receded, icy grip of winter yet waning. High, lofty spires plunging up from their mooring of boulders, pride scaled by dragonfly wings and forced lower yet by chests of cloying silver and ruby jealousy, spines betrayed by conceit, viscera gushing from chest cruelly rent asunder. The beams suffused by decay, specters in the wardrobe hiding with a cursed quaver behind the fading musk of vanished gowns. The crumbly mortar fades away, down to ramparts lonely but for a brazier’s coals jadedly prying beyond, to the grayly marbled shoulders of a statue veined by flecks of mica, bare empty eyes over a desultory scatter of manure. Then back up, where feathery forms of these prejudicial felons warble vaguely before they’re tenderly baked under flaky crust, crushed by jowls.
There’s the rub, feathers for a hundred cushions, so many bolts of damask borne on sweaty backs from the quays. The cushy splay of repose, sweet as nectar. That’s when worries fly away. The quork of a raven, edging our relapse to the tendrils of dankest reality. They defy crusty dreams. The’re the click of a raised latch, the vaguest creak of eastin shutters. The game begins. The burglar delves into an uneasy dark, but there’s no silver inlay. There’s never any riches, just a flutter of jealousy. The despair of staving off another day, unshorn. Those earrings just end up a slather of puke covered over by sawdust, that quavery chuckle quickly capsizing in an ocean of cherry red faces, stale beer and the heavy sag of breasts over the laces of a dirty blouse, the jut of a rosy bud.
Thoughts driven away by acridly curling smoke, like shavings engulfed by the flames of some raging inferno. The dogs are ever watchful. They whine, and whimper, and yowl. The swindler cracks her fingers.
Now, drifting the discordant verge of the seas, the incessant tang of brine drying on crackling lips. Clunk, scrape. The gimlet eyes rove over the pummel of so many waves, harshly crested by foamy white. Those strips of rocks clung by rubbery whorls of kelp, dry and crunchy higher up, where bleached sprawls of debris jut over the empty nest of a gannet.
The horker in the night.
Ulric. Those eyes rise, jaw jerking around tautly. The snarl of a net deftly in hand, fibers tough with tar, stiff with scabs of brine. There are tawdry vessels at anchor, more lines coiling like vipers around rusty cleats, nearly melting in a soupy swirl of fog. The creak of timbers, bulges of the tide coming in over an estuary. The canvas furled, lateen and yards lashed by yet more ropes over spars, the jibs poised like so many devils at the enormity of prows.
Beyond the surf lingers, fraught by their immensity. The tawdry hang of flotsam over ruddy dawn, as though sketched by a god’s brush. Everywhere, the sprawl of broken shell. There it lies over barren shingle, the tiny boat with its girdle of warped timbers, skewing forlorn yet pugnacious. The rough fingers find purchase, hull scraping on grit. There’s rust on the oar locks, stagnant brine choking the scuppers. The sole kicks up, making sand fly over the thwarts, and then away, plowing over a breaker. The oars squeal, and the craft plunges trenchant through the gloom. Then spray bursts over a droop of the gunwales, frigid on the creased ridge of his cheek, maybe a token of favor.
Men always see what’s not there.
Far out, where tendrils of fog swirl. The hushing of dark waters, gently lapping now the fight’s already over. There’s your inveterate soup of life, islands of seaweed carried away by plankton waves, sinking into glowing jelly depths. The dull capers of herring made manifest, mollusk clutching at their rocky coastal perches as the crawlers vent a surreal dirge. Their pincers closing over a shaft of murky light. The magic receding forever.
Splish.
Creak.
Splash.
The clumsy oars go quiet, shafts reducing their presence to now more than a few, whirling cyclones in the craft’s wake. They war against cirumstance, yet inexorably fade to nothing. There’s a clatter as the oars vanish into the scuppers, to scrape upon a mattress of sand and slimy scales.
Then a hush, before the tarry net flings in a spider’s splay, tautly dragged up with the glimmer of a thousand tiny beads of water. They hang from the knots like strings of pearls. This jewelry is empty, though not devoid of beauty. There’s a gasp offered to the waning crescent of moon, maybe even a prayer if it didn’t get snared before reaching those cracked lips. The plight of a greater despair.
Marble busts don’t feed the hungry, though. Brawny, goose prickled shoulders bunch like an adder. The purple, mocking scar of a grin. There, defying spite and envy, ugly displayed on the visage.
Hungry.
