Somnum

Once in the flowers’ market, a cat talked to me—elegant fur and sapphire eyes. Her voice was caramel like facets of a diamond, glowing in every direction. Velvet robes covered her soul— glinting like porcelain. Her movements lulled my spirit as I felt the ground slowly descend and made me dizzy as I fell into a wardrobe of fireworks and wilting flowers. Lingering beneath lampposts of a coming winter; its rosebeds tell me to stay on the right path. And yet whispers lull me into an inescapable sleep.

Snowdrift sings into the cracked lips of night, of wolves howling out to the moon beyond the thicket— there is fire in a distance. I dip my toe into the perils of twilight, of an echoing ritual that reaches for Baal as I approach the flame. Fear binds itself around the roots of a heart thrusting behind this bitter breast —there she is. Lain among the gnome and boar my yellow one stretched before the pyre ablaze the limbs of her burn back into dust her screams make me blear as I collapse back into an endless unconsciousness. A dream that pulls on the bones. Wake— the place is well aflamed— her paws have plodded my lap as I find myself imploring of a trance— its memories, still, like spring.