The Night Comes Quiet

We found a sunny day and lay in the grass watching the earth breathe, pushed out in some field walled with grass and crickets and warm winds making leaves rustle like bells; humectants smell and green things curl under our noses, a dreamed memory not quite tangible yet. I rest my head upon your stomach, listening to biorhythms. I could do this for hours lost in the adventure of your working body as fingers entwine and we hold hands with skins together, molecules hovering in between tiny spaces, and I wonder how can I make you happy again. We let the earth swallow us up in silence. The light fades; night comes quiet, and our bodies chill with violence. You feel me shiver through my fingertips pressed into the bones of your knuckles, a vibration conducted that you squeeze to make stop; the first stars come out while the sky is that royal blue color that makes you want to drown yourself . We wish things in our heads.... "Starlight, star bright first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might, wish the wish I wish tonight." And I think where did that come from? Why is that the most beautiful thing I have ever heard? I break the silence. I say, Bean? and you say Yes? I whisper, Are we dead? and you say, Not yet. Ok, I say, just checking. The night extinguishes everything except the moonlight on your white t-shirt. I think you are a ghost I would like to know better. I curl up between your arm and heart, feel it beating arbitrarily ....beat beat ....beat beat... I wonder how such things can happen in the dead of night, how we just keep going and going and going until one day we don’t. The coldest of summer breezes floats in over our heads and we are numb from it. We don’t care. We stay there tucked in the grass prisoners of ink, silent prisoners of flesh.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Hobo Camp Review Issue 1