Returning

Yesterday, I went back to the house I grew up in.
It was silent and cold.
The walls were caving and the windows craving light.
Dusty shrapnel spattered as I picked my way
Across the hall.
I'd torn the ivy from the kitchen window to get in.
The glass had cracked, unsupported.
And scattered over the mildewed sill.
And inward into the sink.
Crumbling debris and needles littered the floor.
And the air craved life,
And the air craved life.

The rooms once had names and hosted moments,
Before time slowed with the boarding of ways in.
Before ivy gloved the house from sun.
I found the cellar door open,
And poised,
And waiting,
And ready for light.
The stairs vanished too quickly into Unseen.
Memory collided with instinct then.
They joined forces -
Both running the same way.
Out.
Get out.
Get out.
I'd heard it before.
The door
Quivered.
The glass on the sill had cut my hands as I scrambled
In.
The warm crimson dripped to the floor
In tick-tock drops of wet on chocking dry,
Creating craters.
The shivering whisper hushed again;
Get out.
Get out.
And everything went wrong.
Everything went wrong.
Something had grown in the time I'd bee gone.
It had been left unchecked for too long.
Like disease in old trees,
Like rumors that lead to foul deeds.
And I ran.
And I ran.
The edges catching my hands
Again.
I left the air to crave
And the cellar door calling for life.
I left the house I grew up in yesterday,
Regretting the blood on the floor
As too much to leave behind.

The Lady in Blue

“And the clock”, said the Clockmaker, “shall chime the days,
And the bells will ring out to sea.
And the men at arms will fall away
When the wars write their own decrees.
And the Woman in Blue shall sing her last
As her sailor knows not his own sails.
And she’ll pack up her birds in cages shut fast,
And ask again to ring out the bells.
And time will take our freedom away,
As though it were a door made of locks;
Each turn of a key a new minute drawn,
And each cog a tick-followed-tock.”

And the Lady in Blue knew the truth
As soon as the Clockmaker said
That the clock, oh the clock, will render the days,
Will craft the sunrises from lead.

So she took up her birds and descended the stairs
To a chamber below ocean rock.
She plucked all their feathers and cut off her hair,
And set one thousand keys to their locks.
And with all the down and the hair from her head
She carpeted the walls and the floor.
She feathered cell, feathered not bed,
Her sailor turned the keys tight in the door.
And so, the ticking from the Clockmaker’s hands
Resounded across the shores.
But the Lady in Blue, deep beneath the sands,
Could hear none but her birds aching calls.

And so, with no time, no tick-followed-tock,
The Lady in Blue was set free.
Freed from the minutes – made free by the locks,
Keys spread across fathoms of seas.