The Lovely Dark

the haruspex Another night at this miserable fucking restaurant. No, no. You’re lucky to have it. Lucky lucky lucky in a triangle shape over your head as you go through the door so your mind doesn’t get clean. You go through your checklist about halfway and then start over and then a third of the way and then start over as you lock up. It’s important to do things right- there’s a momentum that needs keeping up and if you miss a catch or a check or a click click click you need to turn back to the start, not like turning pages which are soft but like the click click click of a puzzle box. Click click click a third time to finish the shape. Fuck him and no no, he’s doing his best. You’re inches from getting fired. You’re inches from getting fired. It makes the puzzle box important– this is an idea you can paint with, but it dries a different color. You work through the checklist. You work through. Okay. You have work to do. Okay. Your whole body is shaking, a little. Is it always shaking?...

 hallowed, lightless (for my mother) photography by 02vin No face in the wine-dark mirror. No light in this room. No lights under the skin and bone. She tilts her head owlish. Textures in the dark suggesting motion. Soon an eerie light wavers behind her eyes, at the back of her throat, beneath her greasy skin. Something is always coming off her, misting candle wax and paper ashes. She runs terribly hot. What was inside of her that had to make room for this? Something that grew in her and something she swallowed. Something old: drive in creature feature trailer or stones under skin. Stacking stones in driveways and sliding them in gas tanks. B thriller with A list stars. What’s in her is out of her. She replaced it with a tongue of rotten flame. Fire’s nothing nowhere. It’s in her but it’s out of her. When autumn ends at last and winter falls over the earth like a rain of ashes the fire will go out and she’ll be gone. She’ll deliquesce into drool and darkness. But autumn won’t end. ...