Kino-Eyes, Part IV

There is no quiet place in the slivers of moon.
You walk there, you lace among the grey shards,
and your breath roils inside the cage of your chest.
Your feet are slow, slow and your blood is
frenzied, masculine, flung out against the pulse of your
muscles (and the pulse of your muscles sings and screams).
And there is a smell of chemicals,
of thick poisonous reds,
but you can't worry about that.
You feet half-run
and your feet don't stumble.

Rock after rock, displaced, tumbles down the
brown hill, collecting rock after rock and force,
the clouds of dust, the thunder of it. You lose your footing.
The slim green tree at the bottom of the hills, the curve
of soft brown trunk, the new leaves-- what if that were buried?
You fall faster.

Over the grey edge, the burn of the sky. You are cold alone
you are cold and so alone and the wind whistles its dirge past your
forsaken body. And there is no young green tree to break your fall.
So it is the taste of the ocean closing its forbidding tongue around you.

And she is sorry, the sea-nymph. The flick of her green-grey hands through the water,
the quiet paddling towards you. Your lungs are full of water, your body limp with hurt.
The sting of your face against the water knocked you out; you rock and sink. She holds
your head quiet up in the air.

The things that made you laugh, the things that washed softly over the damp place of your soul, quiet white paper, she is that. On the grey sand of the shore, she drags your unconsciousness, and there is peace in the murmur of her waves on the shore. The water in your lungs, the salt collecting in swirls on your skin and eyelids, the weakness of your air-deprived body, they hold you back from asking your question: what does she want of you? Well, what does she want of you, do you think? The seaweed weave of her hair and hands are not filled yet. Alone, she slips back into the water... or are there knives under her feet? Alone, you lie on the shore, and you think of a green tree, and also a green nymph, and neither wishes you torn like that.

You smell some dark chemicals.