Imbolc

Crystal dew breaths, visible but not tangible, fade into ether while the sun snuggles into its gray cloud blanket, pushing back the inevitability of dawn’s awakening.

And my mind turns again the fertile-earth phrase:  It is over.

Beautifully.

Painfully.

Finished.

Unclean reality cast in the jagged-edged slice of voices, a cacophony atonal, cuts me.

I have no blood left to give.

Fitting, I think, this ceremonial feast, this half-winter cleansing; purification and presentation, rituals redundant in modern love, substantive nonetheless.

Verity.

My mother’s alto, soft foam shushing waves on a rocky shore, echoes against my cochlear shell. “He said, ‘I’m sorry’,” she imparts in stunned awe, too dumbfounded to consider vindication.

“I’m sorry…”

And we talk of all the rest, the ones who aren’t, who never will be, who can’t even begin to understand the concept of apology. We talk of straightline winds of change. Of damage rendered. Of rebuilding castles in the air, constructed of relationship collateral, on a foundation of detritus.

Crumbling.

I listen to the ticking-clock pacekeeper, marching in the background, and when the hour chimes, I am reminded. Time is circular, and it always comes around again to this:

Don’t lie to me.

A slide show of ugly truths, interspersed with aspirations and omissions, reels in light-flash scratched images behind my eyes, and it is there – there in the breaths and pauses, the tone and temperament, the interest (divided) and investment (lost) – that I see between the {pro}verb{i}al lines (unspoken).

Change springs anew in the mi{d}st of sorrow’s winter.

Tomorrow is Candlemas.

Our night has ended.

There is dark to banish.

Light your flame.