DIANA
Floorboards creak musty fusty as your feet fall soft over the edge of the bed. Lace curtains tussle by the window as cool autumn winds sweep through the windowgateway. Melos must have opened it.
You pull your self up and onto your feet against a wave of dizziness that throbs through your head, and you half stumble shamble to the dresser where your cane is leaning. Taking it under you and incorporating its new beat into your gait, thunk thunk thunk on the wooden floors. You run a hand through tangled black hair and your fingers get caught. Not worth it. You can hear Melos in the barn, Thunk. Something metal falls. You’re hungry.
You pick up a tank top off the floor, slipping it on with no bra under. Leather pants, an orange flannel. You look in the mirror. Pop an E and some spiro, massage the crust from the corners of your eyes. You’re hungry. From the window you can smell the moon from beneath the earth, past hills and hemlock groves, down and past the center. Its only morning and the moon waits at the base of the world.
Cane in hand you pad through the hallway, wooden floor boards supple, springing you along to the kitchen. You eat three cinnamon donuts while standing in front of the fridge, the coffee percolator beeps. Through the window gateway over the sink, you see wild turkeys on the lawn you never mow. Late november and the grass has died anyway. The world smells like cold earth. Like a sod turned over and scores of earthworms kicking up the cleary syrupy scent with spiteful little tailheads.
You pour your self a cup of coffee with plenty of cream and no sugar. The cream has gone a little bad but the barnyard taste doesn’t bother you as it would Melos. Melos. You pad past the narrow door behind the fridge and into the small anteroom, crack the door leading into the barn. Your girlfriend is bent over her truck, motor oil staining the ass of her jeans in the shape of a hand mark. You close the door before she notices you because you don’t want to distract her. A dipstick or something falls behind the door, you don’t know shit about cars. You return to the kitchen and look at the calendar on the fridge.
DIANA, UNMAKE ME. UNKNIT MY FLESH, UNKNIT MY BONE. I AM DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. I FALL INTO THE PIT OF YOU, CAST MY BONES ON THE BULWARKS OF THE MOUNDY DOORS, INTO THE CAVERN SEAS. THE BLACK BILE BOILS UNDER YOUR LIGHT. MY MARROW LIQUEFIES.
The full moon will rise. Of course you know that, before looking.
Pad, pad, thunk. You make your wake back to the bedroom and pull on a thick sweater, grey wool. The heavy boots with three buckles. Army surplus backpack with your tools. In the drawer of your vanity is a decently sized bowie knife with an antler handle and you tuck in into your waistband, pulling a baggy green coat over it to conceal the handle.
Thunk past the door gateway and down the creaky tunnel hallway, turning left and back into the mudroom chamber, another gateway and you’re out on the porch and brown tabby cats play on the front steps while wild turkeys move across the field of dead leaves like a school of feathered fish. Your cane hits the packed dirt driveway and you’re off towards the street. You pause for a bit as cars go by, pressing your self behind the boughs of an ash so no one sees you. Out of sight is always better for people like us.
You cross the road into the waiting woodland.
DIANA, I LEAVE MY BODY AND DANCE. AT YOUR TABLE I SEW THE FLESH, I KNIT THE BONE. MY BODY IS WET WITH THE FAT. WITH THE SHADOW CUP I DRINK FROM THE EYE OF A BEAR. LONG FINGERS RAKE ME AND I AM TORN FOR YOU. I SWALLOW MY TAIL.
OH, DIANA.