I am up early. There's a party to get ready for, tonight.
Notes of Immortality drifting up from Duncan's guitar this morning. He was up early to light the stove for me (I can do it, he just wanted it to be warm and cozy downstairs when I woke), sticking around to see how things were. This week in particular is the one made of glass, made of thorns and poison, despair and longing and a cold ache from so far away now I think I might never find my way back home. It's as if my calendar is cleared and my brain decides that it's time to pick a fight with my heart and lose, as ever, a weak competitor in the face of a mighty warrior.
(This heart is a keeper, it's a keepsake, it's a rare find.)
Lochlan said that to me once. I was ten years old and I never forgot that because everyone said he was such an old soul it was hard in this day and time to understand what he meant when he said certain things but now on this side of life I get it, and he's right.
This heart is pinned to my sleeve with a rusted safety pin. It's been hanging by a thread for a hundred years now but every so often he comes back and readjusts the pin and it's a little more secure again and everyone lets out a long breath.
Do you have another song, Poet? It's a request that's kind and necessary as I can't do that so he starts playing Black, of all things.
Jesus, Dunk, please. Find something unrelated.
Transmission. Perfect. I test it and it doesn't hurt, a song with blunted fangs that push against my skin instead of breaking through. It will hold. I won't die from listening, a threat if ever there was one.
It's Halloween-day. No one comes down here. The driveways are yards and yards apart. They're all steep, mostly gated and it's so dark at night you can't see your hand in front of your face outside. It's not historically a trick-or-treating neighborhood save for the occasional folks who preclear it with everyone and dance their costumed grandchildren down the street at six sharp, only hitting houses with opened gates that welcome them in. So the gate is open, there's a bowl of candy out in case, but odds are PJ will have finished it off by three sharp and I will have to scramble for granola bars, if I am not already out in the gazebo impaled by my own sharp wit and the burning logs from this raging fire in my heart, rendering everything to ashes, unrecognizable, ruined beyond repair.
Also I just noticed...Michael Myers is standing out at the end of the lawn. I wondered where my scarecrow went. Now I see he's in costume.
Nice, guys. He's my FAVOURITE.