My Favourite Abuser

“All things said and not said, you’ll likely wish you’d never met me on this or any other road.”

“But our meeting made a tale, at least.”

“A tale to be ashamed of.”

“For you, perhaps.”

“I was never looking for you at all. I was searching for someone I lost.”

“Way it goes sometimes.”

I met Nick Cave up in the clouds, and he spoke to me. The birds themselves paused to listen. He tried his very best to let us know how grief can be outrun, but I don’t think we or the birds fully heard. It’s a lifelong thing and honestly, honey, it’s a struggle. 

Another way to say it is the torch that through the blue dream fires the cosmos. Though at this point, that just feels like parody. Who doesn’t love a Dylan cover?

Look. You met me. Or maybe I met you. We were lone snake trails in the dust of other people’s befuddlement before they could admit we’d utterly fucked them. Our dry sinuous curves were never meant to meet. But they did, and here we are. You are the flashback on my stuttering film reel; I am the static on your sputtering radio. 

For as long as there was a stage, we danced. And did we ever dance.

Glimmering cauldron howls in the treetops, I cranked up Ulver for our eldritch frolic, gyrating to the slink of wolves, the glamor of witches, and the yowl of the wildest woods. Black, blacker, blackest metal.

Dreams: electric capillaries flash on a cobalt horizon. I think of X-rays and remember all of our last days. Hallucinogenic black spiders in a speakeasy. Aiming straight for the eyes. But dammit, at least you’ll open your hellacious eyes.

Then winter. Then the remains of winter. Then a guarded breath as we dared to dream of one more spring. Sporadic remnants of old snow, greyed by road dirt, the scattered bones of long absent giants.

And memories. We looked to windward as we traversed the canyon, and we saw the lone bison, the big old front-loaded fuck, snorting and steaming in the diminishing gold of the air, mucus streamers flung like molten flags. A giant knot of this dirty-sweet earth’s best fuckery and love. A shaggy fist given life. 

Life.

I’m near done with words; luckily this doesn’t need words.

I saw in you a tiny flickering beacon, and I went to you for warmth.

You are a woman looking for peace and endlessly, maddeningly doomed to stumble on trouble. Something has been coming for you all your life. Now it’s almost here. 

And me? My life is a rusted sword blunted on the cold diamonds of my damnable dreams.

We are—literally, tragically, hilariously—each other’s just deserts. 

____

Image © Daniel Freeman