Talk to me.

“There is so much rage in me that I don’t know how to begin. I’m not scared, though. Just a little tired, and, in myriad ways, in awe of the weight that can be put on someone. It just takes a little focus, and a little re-balancing.”

- Pellborough Street Fair, 1987.

At the foot of her bed, over the long long hours of the day, I forcibly ceased to become surprised by changes in her heart rate or even worried that such things could be of any danger to her at all, so that, with time, as the night drew on, I became self-sufficient and knew that I would be alright enough to fall asleep. When it was evident to me that the nurses would not be coming back in to check on me for a while, I crawled underneath the hospital bed and, spreading my jacket across the small expanse of available floor, hid underneath my love, and I curled up and went to sleep.

The core of our discussions between the Ouija board and the people in the attic revolved around the summer of 1997.

The doctor poured a bottle of aspirin into the open chest cavity before sewing her back up. The stitches were thin and tight; his workmanship became hidden below puddles of blood welling over her abdomen. An angel was asked to leave the room when her halo began to sputter, making the others doctors nervous. Alone with the patient, sighs and gasps were more freely breathed.

(Source: corpseonpumpkin.com)

On a weekday the church pews are empty until the afternoon. The chapel is silent, and the vestibule looks haunted. I can feel the room still echoing with ghost motions from distant Christmas services, funeral gatherings and baptisms. Alone on a Monday morning, with no sound but the creaking of the rafters and a vacuum drone seeping in from some unseen pocket of the House of God, I cross my legs uncomfortably in the front pew, back and forth from right leg to left, lacing and unlacing my hands, certain that unnecessary worry and phantom dilemma are going to undo me one of these days.

The pills they had us taking swept entire weeks past us in dusty clouds across the floor. I could blink, but so slowly, and just once … and one month later, wearily, it seemed I could turn my head, and it took forever to remember I didn’t want to lose you in this huge, blinding white building, but it was so hard to concentrate.

A spider burrowing within the belly of an angel.