Last Song Before Night

She read books of poetry, though they had lately begun to stoke her fury. It was all very well for these poets, who wandered off to have adventures and then could string them to words, to music. Anything she might write would be formless, a creature of rage and stormcloud. No music there.

A surface, she reflected, exists for so many reasons, concealment only one. For it may also serve to protect, from others and from oneself. And perhaps, in an unexpected twist, to protect others from oneself.

It would occur to her later that sympathy is disarming even without surprise, but unexpected sympathy leaves no defense.

I will ride horses like wind I will warm my hands at fires I will savor darkened wines I will not think of the road’s end.

She lit a candle and set it down at the altar amid a sea of tiny flames. Each of them the same, as if all the dreams and desires of people were indistinguishable from one another. The prayer of a female poet, perhaps the only one in Eivar, no different from a mother’s prayer for her sickening infant or a farmer’s prayer for a good harvest.

Do I have your leave to keep on clinging to a dream of you?