Blood
And there are other memories, still looking for something to bite, like fierce, unsatisfied teeth. They gnaw us to the last bone, devouring the long silence of all that lies behind us. ~ Pablo Neruda
When he was a young man, he would sleep on his back, laid out on the ground, generally where ever he happened to drop from exhaustion. His hand usually rest on a weapon, conventional or otherwise, ready to be yanked out of sleep and have to fight for breath, for life.
Heart beats go by and he grows more comfortable within his skin, more accustomed to what he can and cannot do. He sleeps on his side, an arm curled beneath his head. Free hand still finds a weapon, a method of defense or protection, a sounder sleep of some one more comfortable in power.
Now he sleeps sprawled on his front. No longer on the ground, he finds softer places, warmer coverings, he faces his back out to his world. Anything that might be anything is less a threat of physical force that might take him from the outside of sleep. What he considers the most comes to him in dreams, and the how in which he sleeps makes no difference to what stalks him in his sleep.
Blood chemistry changes with respirations, he can hear her voice, feel her inside of him. Burnt hair and earthen eyes. “Cefnder,” she calls for him, in his sleep she changes him, quickens his physical pace. He knows eventually in body she will find him, same as she finds him in soul. Awake she is less a measure of threat than asleep. He wakes in sweat to pace his room, then through his home, and spends the next nights sleeping on his floor, on his back, hand on the thing that binds them and divides them.
When he was a young man, he would sleep on his back, laid out on the ground, generally where ever he happened to drop from exhaustion. His hand usually rest on a weapon, conventional or otherwise, ready to be yanked out of sleep and have to fight for breath, for life.
Heart beats go by and he grows more comfortable within his skin, more accustomed to what he can and cannot do. He sleeps on his side, an arm curled beneath his head. Free hand still finds a weapon, a method of defense or protection, a sounder sleep of some one more comfortable in power.
Now he sleeps sprawled on his front. No longer on the ground, he finds softer places, warmer coverings, he faces his back out to his world. Anything that might be anything is less a threat of physical force that might take him from the outside of sleep. What he considers the most comes to him in dreams, and the how in which he sleeps makes no difference to what stalks him in his sleep.
Blood chemistry changes with respirations, he can hear her voice, feel her inside of him. Burnt hair and earthen eyes. “Cefnder,” she calls for him, in his sleep she changes him, quickens his physical pace. He knows eventually in body she will find him, same as she finds him in soul. Awake she is less a measure of threat than asleep. He wakes in sweat to pace his room, then through his home, and spends the next nights sleeping on his floor, on his back, hand on the thing that binds them and divides them.