Cher KT

Last night a heavy frost lay on the ground and the lawn was white in the light of a cold crescent moon. I forgot to sleep and sat pounding at the typewriter for hours while my brother and his friends drank and danced in the  rooms downstairs.
Morning came and the sun was very bright. I went down into the living room and looked out over the garden. The sun had turned the frost to water and every blade of grass was hung with shining pearls of dew. Each one a perfect sphere. I went out in my slippers and an old overcoat and walked on the grass and breathed in the fresh smell of the morning. I remembered just how far I was from you, in body and in soul, just how many miles hung between us.
Now I am looking out of my window again. The sun has gone down over the hills and the air looks clear to me. Clear as blue crystal. My brother is on the telephone talking to his girlfriend or some other companion.
There are over six hundred miles between us. A depth no man has plunged to and a height only the bravest have aspired.

In my dreams I am standing at the edge of the Preacher's Cliff, two thousand feet above the water. The air is cold and there is a slight breeze but I am not afraid. The water shimmers blue in afternoon sunlight. I am no longer concerned about prison, about debt, about ruin and iniquity and all the parcels of shame I drag in my waking hours. Here above the waters, I feel free.

VI - The Lovers

Drunken trysts in sweaty rooms. Bedsheets tangled round writhing legs. Gasps and breathless smiles and hazy eyes the soft soft blue of summer skies.
They never told me anything like this would happen. Yes they mentioned butterflies and lurching organs and the agony and the ecstasy yes. And the awkwardness and the moments never forced to crisis yes. But not this.
The smell of hair intoxicates like no drug ever made. The softness of lips and breasts and warm skin and the way fingers touch and tongues caress. All this I was told and more. They have told me nothing is better than the first kiss and nothing is better than falling hotly in love. Others have given me to understand nothing is better than shoving a lump of gristle into a cave of flesh. And I have gone out with these shreds of advice mashed into my own heavy thoughts and I have done what I could.
But I was unprepared for this. For the stripping back of the bark and the heartwood exposed as pale and foul as maggots in an open wound brought blind and wriggling into the light and I felt weaker and more pathetic than ever a truant schoolchild was before his mother.
And she says yes. Okay. I understand. And I know you and love you. And I knew and loved you last night and nothing is changed except we have more sunlight now and still there is nobody else who wants you more than me. Nobody else.
And I was released. I was cleaner than the sunlight that streams white-and-gold through the open sky. I was washed free of all the noxious sorrows that gnawed and squirmed and shat within me.
Of how love is great and how nice it is to be with someone you love I was told a very great deal. Of the tryst of flesh I was told everything but of the covenant of minds nothing was disclosed. Not just to give her body up to me but to take my worst parts and accept them and through her agency make me more whole than I ever was before. That they never told me about.