Until that day...

She had left the summer house tucked in the drunken, gaping woods, the one that laughed too hard and thought too much, and didn’t know how the outer begot the inner and reverse and so thusly it was, and walked her way out of the place. Not for good. Probably not at all on the inside, but it’s good to let the house be…see how it rises again in the next sunlight, notice whether any fires start again burning from the stone chimney, and listen from afar, so much until you can really hear the roots of the echoes, the timbre of each word and how it comes to you, and you can see that blessed, orchestrated forest from the relative safety of the outer reaches of the river bank, and wildwood. Leavin’ alone, is not leaving, that’s for true.

Just as the fire blood of the setting sun shed its last hum of quarter beneath the skirt of heaven, she felt something tug on her boot, crunching with the leaves in a way that she knew was not naturally so. There was a tiny folded up piece of paper (not ripped, or crumpled, mind you – folded), stuck to the inside heel. She removed it and kept it as she did most things she found or was meant to find- she tucked it neatly into the left side of her bosom. Safe next to the heart place, which lived out here, well fortified. The sun skipped itself away from the places within and without, the loss of light made her feel full, and she was hoping beyond hope that the little summer house was learning to fill itself up again too, fires, whiskeys, the like…the little bent up paper made her smile, and she decided These words written upon it would be the last words until that time came, the next one you can’t see until you’re flowing in its waves, back and forth and the light returns. A haiku no less. Only these, not hers, could be the last words indeed…for now.

No sober sobber
am I. 'Round gypsy camp fires
I dance drunken tears

M. Lucia