A Homecoming Aftermath

"The leopards eat the priests and slink from the temple in their robes. New priests grow up through the paving stones in the plaza."
-Joshua Clover ("Baroque Parable")

The dew settled on the screen.

Outlined in net, the chalk lines began to burrow back through the woven thread; whispering untended tales of brim meeting lip by wind-softened glass.

The eyes cradled her obscurity; a lithe movement, ephemeral in its Daedalean virtue – each smile line undulating the buried measures of a moon distorted. I began to think of a song. Her legs stretched beneath like roots.

She drew the scribe from the veil, lit the room with a fragile drift "Why is the day as bright as it is?" The lighters chimed in a déjà vu of mimicry.

A drunkard in the corner snickered in misunderstanding "I smoke and I drink and every time I blink," she illuminated at the brink of her cigarette, "I have a tiny dream."

The moon was far from such decadence, and the stars (somewhere past the shattered clouds) shined deep beyond the pale horizon as if to side in transient empathy the end of things as were... and the light of things to come.

We would never be here again.