say it

Where did you go
Across the sea?
Sat on the beach
With the rusting machines?

I know there was a time
Before we were born
We stood in the trees
Heads filled with nothing

--

I have dreams within dreams within dreams tonight.

In a kitchen -- it's the one Ray used to share with Stella -- I'm at the table, and Phin is cooking, and when she turns to me I can see how pregnant she is, the Philosopher's Stone on a chain and resting on the swell of her belly. She says I'm the Daddy and I have a surreal moment of knowing it's Mercedes growing inside her, to be born again, and I ache in my sleep for wanting to touch her so much (no, I'm not sure which her).

In the red room where I always meet Mercedes in dreams, she's in her white dress, her black hair spilling like ink all over the floor, only she's the one with child now, the room is convex, she's far, far away, and the red of the room smells like blood spilling into a marriage bed and Naomi's screaming -- but the child is crying this time, roaring the anger of life into its lungs, and it sounds like Phina's singing --

When I open my eyes in bed, it's cold -- I left the heat off (that's right, it's the dead of winter), and I can see my breath making ghost clouds around my face, and I'm unsure that I'm awake at all. Eurydice is lying next to me, and she's crying, she's staring at me.

I feel nothing; I feel insubstantial, and the less I feel, the more she cries. I've never borne a child, but I put this part of my soul into this girl, the part that had tears left, the part that had love left. When I feel pain, Eurydice bleeds. When I breathe in the past, Eurydice's the one who cries. When I overdose, she's the one who can't breathe. Right now, she's pressing her hands against the hollow between her hips, like something's missing there, and my skin is numb and hers is cold when I hold her.

My embrace is lead weight. I have no love to give, but in her eyes is all the love I used to have, the way I used to look reflected in my sister's eyes. Eury's face is my face; when I'm awake, she dreams for me.

When I die -- no, when I am Nothing -- she might be free, she might live in all the ways I couldn't. Or maybe the Ten would accept her in my stead, take her shell-body as proxy and let me go.

Maybe I never woke up just then, because the next thing I remember is clinging to the rim of the toilet, heaving out my guts, unable to get the smell of infant blood, of Naomi's milk, of my sister's sickroom, out of my mouth. And I feel these pale little cold fingers at my temple, I feel this moonfall of silkblack hair against my shoulder, sticking in the blood of mine that's begun bleeding there.

She's saying, don't cry, my brother. She's moved enough for me that she forgets -- Eurydice forgets, this is Eury, Eury -- that she isn't allowed to call me that.

My shuddering breath echoing in the porcelain sounds like the anger of ten devils; I close my eyes and I'm in a white chamber, the blessed end slipping away from my fingers.

"Say it again," I tell her, gasping.

"Don't cry," she says, and I am not crying, but there are tears on her cheeks.

"Say it--"

"...My brother," she says, so softly, so softly.

--

An angel with its wings on fire
Become an angel with its wings on fire
I'm in the basement just killing the hours
I'm in the basement just killing the hours