She And Sleep Were Lovers
Mark Howard Jones
With apologies to Bill Nelson, gentleman guitarist
Her room is disordered. Discoloured. She escapes from its dourness and drabness whenever he comes to her.
Discordant, dreaded; she pushes away her so-called life. The diurnal world is a dreary shroud that she constantly seeks to shrug from her shoulders. How it weighs her down. Only he understands; only he has the answer.
*****
Strange to think that she doesn't really know what he looks like. Each time he seems familiar yet never the same. But she always recognises him and he is always in the same place; behind the huge brass and bone doors guarding the oneiric oasis from which she drinks deeply.
Yet she never leaves her room. Her bed becomes a barge to the world hiding shyly and slyly within her mirror. It is a huge, luxurious vessel much larger than it appears to the eyes. Only her mind knows its true dimensions, and then only when asleep.
The vessel draws near to where she knows he will be waiting.
Her heart races, like a giant timepiece ticking at the centre of everything, a tender metronome to measure out their love, its sound drowning all other sounds for a moment. How long that moment lasts cannot be measured by any clock except her own.
Starlight below her now, the cosmos wheels by under her bed, as his hands, like oily smoke, caress her body and his tongue, a fiery salamander, forces her teeth apart.
*****
She had found him, stumbled across him, from time to time, washed up on the beach like flotsam from her inward sea. Half-drowned in her desire, gasping for air. Pitiful and perfect.
Helping him up, hung with bones and dressed in weed, he seemed to her like a drowned doll, chained and sinking ever down. She was the shining sequined sea creature, come out of the depths to save him from himself.
In a small shack overlooking the ocean, she would lay him down, her head on his chest. So close that his somnolent sighs were like breeze through her hair; his love glowing from within him, strong enough to brighten the night and raise wrecks from the ocean depths, to spill their treasures at her feet.
She is lost in him.
*****
She has woken sometimes alone. In the cold and the darkness she groans at the realisation that she is back here. God no, anywhere but here.
Then reaching blindly for the glass of liquid, green and thick. Within its now hidden lights lies the road back to her beloved. Any path to the place of perfection is permitted.
Pressing it to her lips, she buries her head in the pillow and begs for admittance to his blessed realm once more. And then, sometimes all at once, he is in the room with her. He comes to her and stands beside her bed. They then change places, it seems to her, and she stands gazing down at his pale body, as long as her life and as slim as her chances.
He invites her between the sheets and she curls against his unspeakably ancient yet always new body. Each time she closes his eyes he is renewed, refreshed, always young. Forever with her.
*****
Other moments she has met him near the river, where the mists hide the early morning trees and the dew kisses her lashes playfully. He is never there at first. But slowly he emerges from the mists, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed darkly, but always with his eyes full of love for her.
This time his eyes are filled with tears and beauty. He knows this is the last time. Nothing left now but the ashes of love, blowing away in the wind, settling on the water and drifting downstream.
*****
The tablets forced between her chattering teeth have taken her to a place where she has never been before. She begins to feel the ice of panic form on her thoughts; maybe he won't be able to find her here. Maybe she is lost?
Wandering away from the places she knows, cold dreams close over her, clutch at her, welcoming her into their dark embrace.
A final cigarette drops from her limp fingers, falling onto the loose leaves of poems lying next to her bed. The heat devours her latest lines more avidly than any human reader ever has.
As the dark, unknown man enters her room, the flames feel like a thousand gentle kisses on her ruined skin.
With apologies to Bill Nelson, gentleman guitarist
Her room is disordered. Discoloured. She escapes from its dourness and drabness whenever he comes to her.
Discordant, dreaded; she pushes away her so-called life. The diurnal world is a dreary shroud that she constantly seeks to shrug from her shoulders. How it weighs her down. Only he understands; only he has the answer.
*****
Strange to think that she doesn't really know what he looks like. Each time he seems familiar yet never the same. But she always recognises him and he is always in the same place; behind the huge brass and bone doors guarding the oneiric oasis from which she drinks deeply.
Yet she never leaves her room. Her bed becomes a barge to the world hiding shyly and slyly within her mirror. It is a huge, luxurious vessel much larger than it appears to the eyes. Only her mind knows its true dimensions, and then only when asleep.
The vessel draws near to where she knows he will be waiting.
Her heart races, like a giant timepiece ticking at the centre of everything, a tender metronome to measure out their love, its sound drowning all other sounds for a moment. How long that moment lasts cannot be measured by any clock except her own.
Starlight below her now, the cosmos wheels by under her bed, as his hands, like oily smoke, caress her body and his tongue, a fiery salamander, forces her teeth apart.
*****
She had found him, stumbled across him, from time to time, washed up on the beach like flotsam from her inward sea. Half-drowned in her desire, gasping for air. Pitiful and perfect.
Helping him up, hung with bones and dressed in weed, he seemed to her like a drowned doll, chained and sinking ever down. She was the shining sequined sea creature, come out of the depths to save him from himself.
In a small shack overlooking the ocean, she would lay him down, her head on his chest. So close that his somnolent sighs were like breeze through her hair; his love glowing from within him, strong enough to brighten the night and raise wrecks from the ocean depths, to spill their treasures at her feet.
She is lost in him.
*****
She has woken sometimes alone. In the cold and the darkness she groans at the realisation that she is back here. God no, anywhere but here.
Then reaching blindly for the glass of liquid, green and thick. Within its now hidden lights lies the road back to her beloved. Any path to the place of perfection is permitted.
Pressing it to her lips, she buries her head in the pillow and begs for admittance to his blessed realm once more. And then, sometimes all at once, he is in the room with her. He comes to her and stands beside her bed. They then change places, it seems to her, and she stands gazing down at his pale body, as long as her life and as slim as her chances.
He invites her between the sheets and she curls against his unspeakably ancient yet always new body. Each time she closes his eyes he is renewed, refreshed, always young. Forever with her.
*****
Other moments she has met him near the river, where the mists hide the early morning trees and the dew kisses her lashes playfully. He is never there at first. But slowly he emerges from the mists, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed darkly, but always with his eyes full of love for her.
This time his eyes are filled with tears and beauty. He knows this is the last time. Nothing left now but the ashes of love, blowing away in the wind, settling on the water and drifting downstream.
*****
The tablets forced between her chattering teeth have taken her to a place where she has never been before. She begins to feel the ice of panic form on her thoughts; maybe he won't be able to find her here. Maybe she is lost?
Wandering away from the places she knows, cold dreams close over her, clutch at her, welcoming her into their dark embrace.
A final cigarette drops from her limp fingers, falling onto the loose leaves of poems lying next to her bed. The heat devours her latest lines more avidly than any human reader ever has.
As the dark, unknown man enters her room, the flames feel like a thousand gentle kisses on her ruined skin.