(no subject)
the fire was warm and moving, a gentle gold.
but once, i turned the dial on the red-oil lamp and the flame gave up, swallowed by a tarnished mouth. this is the kind of lamp that the pioneers used, you had said, and i didn't understand then why you felt it necessary to use the past-tense. but i get it now: you didn't know how we were the frontier also, and we were holding together in the dark, breathing steam and shadow. how four hundred wolves were circling our camp, and how we were carving words into the flesh of wood because we had already burned the paper, to keep warm
but once, i turned the dial on the red-oil lamp and the flame gave up, swallowed by a tarnished mouth. this is the kind of lamp that the pioneers used, you had said, and i didn't understand then why you felt it necessary to use the past-tense. but i get it now: you didn't know how we were the frontier also, and we were holding together in the dark, breathing steam and shadow. how four hundred wolves were circling our camp, and how we were carving words into the flesh of wood because we had already burned the paper, to keep warm