Down, down.
The storm crawled in torment toward the northern mountains.
The clouds swam like blood through a sea of the night; always a guttural sob churned deep from within their bowels. Down, down.
He'd waked from a deep sleep in the early night. The screams of locomotives plunged down, down the crumbled halls of the city. As he stirred, he cried out. There was a cone of silence then. He drew his right hand to his eyes, as if in shame. Fourth night in a row, he thought, and climbed naked from his bed to the window. Outside, he saw nothing. Only lights scattered in the city below.
and when I'm awake I feel . . . blades of despair in unbroken mirrors, floods of vanity in strange, unknowing eyes.
He turned and happened upon a cigarette left rolling in the basin of his pack, and quickly he strode to his closet. He dressed himself and moved silently through the front door. He checked his pocket for the orange lighter. It was there. As he stepped into the winter, he nursed a small blade of fire beneath his palm until the glow of the cigarette gave way to his breath. The wind carried the sail of smoke to sea.
Looking overhead, he saw the jet crowns of the mountains give way under the encroaching storm. As their shadows collided, pieces broke on the echoes of the suffering world and scattered as frozen ash to the dead earth. Slowly, the snow began to bury everything. Down, down.
I'd bleed myself to know someone, anyone. To know them.
He dragged light from his lips and breathed so that he could hear something in the still cold. Then thunder growled around him and through the softening ground as if to appease him. He turned to see a quickening flicker, like a waning candle, deep inside that swell of black blizzard.
His cigarette spent, he flicked it from his fingers. It melted through the thin layer of snow and extinguished; ashes glittering - strewn seeds of fading fire.
His hands and tongue found their way to the high moon, now no more than a vague pearl veiled in sheets, and one by one they caught frail shards of ice. He closed his eyes. Down, down. Snowflakes tickled his face.
From afar, he stood like an angel clad in black.
Set me free. I'm not afraid. Let me out of this. It doesn't matter what lies ahead. At least hell will have conviction. At least emptiness is peaceful. Let me go. Don't let this sad story get worse. Tragedy over disintegration. Just let me look back one more time at the world, then plow through me like a cool breeze or a hurling truck.
He lowered his pale green eyes and slid his hands down his pockets. His head fell, and a tear froze to his glass cheek.
The truth is I'm ready to die.
There was a flash somewhere between heaven and that blackening sky, and as if the whole world was swallowed into a tunnel of silence and spewed forth in screams, soft silver gleamed alone down the mountainside and burst across darkness overhead.
He felt his knees break beneath him. He looked up. He looked up as if he'd never willed it in his life. A holocaust of white fire spread through trillions of falling flakes - melting mid-air, each a chrysalis of a tear born burning, cascading, spinning down winter, down, down.
The melted snow fell over him like a warm summer rain. He tried to breathe but his heart was lifted on its string, and he took flight on the undulating air and earth and storm beneath the hand of the lightning's cry. But he did not ascend,
I was not free.
He remained, standing in the rain, in the snow, falling slow, down,
down.