There might come a late winter night, when the air is cold and biting,
That you find yourself answering your door to the sound of a strange god’s pounding heart.
You cautiously crack the rough hewn wood just a sliver
Just to see
And there he is, lumbering there, on your stoop
All wild-eyed and feral grin,
You notice the cosmos stirring within his fur
And you’re a little fearful of letting him in.
Before you have a chance to speak to him, though,
He barges his way through the door, brushes your worries off his stone arch shoulders,
Like brushing the sand from your feet after a stroll along the beach.
He clambers toward your favorite chair
And invites himself into it, his hulking form making your only comfortable space screech in protest.
But there is purpose in his posture, in his swaying scarred head, and you suppose what the hell, he’s welcome to sit
For just a spell.
And then you think, it must be a spell
To be so disrupted this late in the night
By a wild god stitched up in moonlight.
He grins his savage song again, and you see him beckon you to feel comfortable in your own home beside the fire, so you accept his crooked finger like a fish to a lure
And sit at his feet as his eyes ponder over your biology.
You feel pulled to ask about the snakes in his belly, the raven claws in his arms, the budding stars of infant galaxies exploding to life within his rib cage.
But you don’t want to ruin the silence with the danger of pragmatic spoken language.
So you sit with him and listen
to the rhythms in his breathing
And you find a melody in it.
It sounds like the haunted chords of your embryonic certitude.
You find comfort in that, so you again try for a prayer, a whispered word
A verse of starlight
Anything! that you might hear this sparking creature speak.
You will find you want his voice so badly
That you address the solemnity in his dark charm and tell him of your day.
You try to avoid your need to bleed and scream and dance in revelry of all that stands before the time when it was sorrow that you wore.
Because at some point, you became scared of your own speech so you began to hide it under the crunch of oak leaves.
But this feral god, this dream before you, he sees
And he reaches out and takes your callused hands and examines.
He reads the well worn lines and fretful designs, and again his eyes play flame over that wicked grin.
Knowing you deeper than you know yourself.
He lets you go and for a moment you don’t know how you could possibly ever go on.
The pain in his eyes and those spaces within you make you want to weep.
But then he reaches over and pulls from the fire a single seed, a tiny thing
Aglow amid the shadows that are
beginning to take shape as soulful forms climbing up the living room walls.
He watches your face
Probably trying to gauge how resolute your insides are
Before he places it in the palm of your outstretched hand.
Tears find their way to the corners of your eyes, and they stream down your face at the eternity of his small gesture, and you realize you don’t know how long you’ve been sitting there with him.
So you look down to find the time but somehow you are rooted to the floor, moss and clover spreading up your lower limbs, tickling your skin.
And then the seed you hold begins to warm
So you eat it
You swallow it down with the glass of bourbon this wild being has passed to your hand.
His laugh is a belly rumble like thunder in the distance, and your head swims under his influence as you praise that single sound.
He asks: why did you leave me behind?
And you don’t know how to answer because you know in your heart the illusions you were once fed had won. It seems so very long ago.
I had to conform, I had to survive.
That wild eyed shine returns to his face, a face you found revolting at his arrival, a face you’re probably growing accustomed to now.
And you open your throat to speak, but moths flutter out in place of the voice that used to be yours.
You see that the strange god sitting in your chair weeps with you, and nods his great dark head. He touches your very blood with the clamoring of his own shaded thoughts.
And the shadows that were nothing much just moments before
Are now dancing in harmony with the breath solidifying in the air.
His breath that winds its way inside your mind and the tunnels within your heart
His eyes shine in tune to the strings of your own wanton music and you will most likely fall drunk on the gravity of that forgotten language.
Then roots form in your belly, pulling your bone and tendon along a web of fates.
The blood in your veins turns to silt and soil and your mouth invites the stages of life to sing from your lungs.
You look to find the time again but your house is no longer there.
Your wild god has brought a skin drum and is beginning to pound your birth.
Spirits of bird and bone swirl about your head, unaware that you probably don’t want them anywhere near.
But your god keeps drumming, keeps the pulse waves of your dreams.
He calls all the beasts and birds and worms
And you hear the earth’s shouts of defiance echo in the air.
You watch in secret pleasure as your spirit joins the flight
Again you seek after the voice of the shadowed being that found his way to your door.
He’s there, no longer a separate taste of freedom in your gut
But a wakened thing, a dancing step
And you find yourself alive with the agony of it all.
And then in a moment’s flash, you’re blinking, tears fogging your liberated eyes.
You wake upon a misty dawn, an empty glass at your fingertips, your changed spirit sprawled atop the hearth rug.
You will most likely laugh in wonder of finding yourself in such disarray
As you begin another day.
There may come a late winter night, when the air is cold and biting,
You will find yourself answering your door to a strange God’s pounding heart.
So you cautiously crack the rough hewn wood just a sliver
Just to see
If he’d like to come in for a drink.
+Lj
Lauryn Jean 