We lay wrapped in the blanket of midnight,
Cradled like newborns in Darkness' hand,
Its chilled fall breath dusting our skin with goosebumps,
And our souls with shivers.
We talked of deeper things than breaths,
As tidbits and great chunks of our lives hunted each other,
Just outside our woven house.
With death-stricken leaves below our hearts,
And a still and starry night above,
Visible in patchwork pieces through the latticework,
Of half-naked branches tangled like wire.
We spoke in the softness of untold thoughts,
The intimacy of pasts and passions.
We were a strange a gathering as any,
A boy with a girl on either arm,
But interested in neither.
A ladies man of another sort.
He held his all-but-sister under one jacket wing,
And I laid myself on his other side,
Compressing his arm with my small head.
It felt so strange, my dear, to lay so close,
To someone who was not you.
The effect tried to bring me to silent tears in the twilight,
But I didn't let them rain on our still and all but silent parade,
To fall and water the dead beneath us.
She curled into his brotherly embrace and inviting warmth,
As I folded my hands upon my stomach,
"Sometimes I wish he had never been born."
I wound my brain first around having a sibling,
And then around not wanting them to exist.
I think I understood.
"He had a girlfriend in middle school."
"So did I."
It took only those three simple words to convey a sad,
But altogether too real truth,
One that I cannot begin to imagine.
"Did you get spit everywhere?"
"Yeah, it was disgusting."
"That's not a problem I've ever had..."
I hadn't thought of her like that before.
I knew she wasn't innocent,
But I still often see her as freshly fallen snow.
And did they guess?
Had they speculated about my unalone time,
Like I had heard them do of others'?
They raised not one eyebrow between them,
They simply asked how you were.
They're the group I had been missing before,
One that lays in the hearts of thickets,
Close and warm and comfortable,
Speaking of covers and things unspoken.
There was something in that string of moments,
Connected by breaths,
That defies my vocabulary,
With its tongue stuck proudly out.
Perhaps it is not something for words,
Perhaps it is part of the magic that I have so long believed in.
Moments like that stay frozen,
In one's memory,
Like insects eternalized in amber.
Those small sharings of soul,
Beneath pale yellow autumn leaves,
And watched by cold, dead stars.
