Ian,
I'm a river of blood and a forest of dreams. I am a fairy tale, although perhaps the resting place of all others. Last night, I drew you through space and the woods reached for you, famished of your secrets.
The station was busy, the trains wailing long like women mourning. The half-light gathered and fell, gathered and fell, like diversions made of fallen leaves. Autumn has come, and the trees are undressing into the cold, their thin arms raising the rough bark of gooseflesh and bending, shy, from the persistent wind. The cool air freezes the blood to a glutinous crust, feathering white frost at it's edges, the crystals forming hard and purely against the syrupy mess of human life. You followed the bruise of my hair slipping quiet through the trees, until I pulled you back. You make me very curious. You've been here before.
In the church, there's no chaplain or quiet hush. It's as freezing as the air without, and the starlings are awake in the rafters, all fledglings grown from the spring to gawky and shrieking scavengers.
When the door opened, the eight lit candles shivered in their bed of fifty, and you glanced at me, your eyes bewildered, while I walked along the seat of a pew to a large window depicting a snake and a wolf.
"What is this?" you asked me. In dreams, the loose weave of your gray sweater shows your skin through it. The buttons at the top are undone. Your hair looks bored, and disinterested. But your eyes are wide and purposeful, and you walk with your head low, watching careful how you meet the ground.
"A church," I told you. "I came because the Dragon died today. It's my anniversary."
"Why only yours?"
I kicked a hymnal laying in a pile of leaves and dirt.
"Because he isn't dead anymore."
You paced me from the opposing side of the church.
"What do you celebrate?"
I dug in the pocket of my jeans, and produced for you something that I tossed, flashing, across the open air. You caught it easy, and examined it. Your lighter. A cigarette appeared, dreamlike. You thanked me.
"His death meant the birth of Evelyn," I told you. "Like you know, the wise master dies..."
Your smile slides downward from your eyes that gently crease, humor dripping to the corners of your mouth in an easy and discernible slope.
"Then you begin a long journey," you answered.
I stopped at the bank of candles and lit one in red glass. I saw you count.
"Who are these?" you asked.
"One is a friend of mine. One is the Dragon's from last year. One is for Brad. One is for a boy who died in the summer I never met. One is for Jack. One is for Clyde. One is for a boy that doesn't have a name. And...that one is yours."
Matthew, do you think that all life could be said to be made on the tombs of our fathers? I get so worried the world is made of nothing but bone and hair and the stone of some father much older than we know. And I'll never be a part of that structure, really. Sometimes it feels like I'm the most ephemeral thing, dried up or burned down quickly enough to be forgotten and born again.
We found blankets in the chapel, which itched from filth, and I held one around us while you came with me in your lap, your back against a wall, your eyes lifting upward, my hands in your hair. I wonder if you remember.
Love,
Annik
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