Ill Wind

It was impossible to separate disease of the mind and disease of the body: they both perched menacingly on the chest, waiting to smother the oppressed.

Darker clouds were rolling in like a blanket, like they might do in England. Contradicting the wretched street sounds, church bells came softly on the breeze, the ill wind that crept through her open windows.

(A man across the street cleans the inside of his window. This is important now, that these lenses be clean and clear.)

Anne had a dream years ago where Aaron came to her. He placed his hand on her chest and said nothing. This great calm radiated from his fingers and washed over her whole body. A calm that she perhaps did not know she needed at that time. Until she woke again to cold chaos, void of touch.

Now, James had done that, not knowing.

She woke in the middle of the night, thinking of the old dream, thinking that it had been speaking the future. As her dreams of him often did, over her twenty years of dreaming them.

Anne turned her head and James was looking at her through the darkness. She wanted to be wrapped up, folded inside him, inside music.

Her vastness, boundlessness, gathered gathered gathered up in his hands.

He was looking at her, still, through the darkness, but her sight, her vision of him was clear.

What did clarity matter when there was no world anymore?

And if the world returned, must she rejoin the army of the afraid? To march, corpse-like through questions she didn’t care to answer? Or would she be given up to those who come out now to selfishly poke and prod an idea of her, always come out, always return to talk of themselves, to write answers on her untouchable skin. Also afraid.

Again alone, unseen, the ill wind clattering the blinds in unrest. Inevitably blowing, distance and harm and giving in.

xW