tomy

“Don’t leave me,” I begged softly, though there was no one around to hear it. The words hung in the air like mist, dissolving into the stillness. The lake stretched out before me, quiet, unbothered, its surface a smooth pane of silver under the early morning light. It hadn’t changed, not really.  The same gentle curve along the shoreline, the same leaning trees with roots exposed like old bones, the same patch of reeds where we used to hide and whisper secrets like we were fugitives from the world. In summer, we swam here until our lips turned blue and the sun sank behind the trees. We’d race to the dock, cannonball in, then lie on towels that smelled of mildew and sunscreen. In winter, the lake froze into a sheet of glass. We laced up our skates and carved loops and figure-eight across it, pretending we were weightless. We fell so often our elbows bruised, but we laughed anyway. It all looked the same. And yet, none of it felt familiar anymore. I climbed the trail ...

                 love always,

 

                         love always,

  The Graveyard. It was a dark night of September  the end of summer, the beginning of fall. I was walking in it, trying not to think as much as I did. The tombs were made of bricks  some had flowers, others did not. There were crows, everywhere along the way. I looked at all these names, marked forever in stone  all these lives that once were, but will never be again. Some of them had children  some of those children already passed. And then she was there, standing in a long black dress. The Morrigan. She seemed cruel, but knew better than to be mean. She asked what I was looking for here. I said: “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here  at the edge of humanity, the limit of death.” I thought I was funny. It didn’t make her laugh. Instead, she waved her hand  and I blacked out. The Fall. I fell so hard into the dark I didn’t know it was possible. My body was unfeasible, a spirit trapped inside an object. Then I woke up in a lab...