PARIAH

It’s true, i was careless, that one i was always shadowing–that little light of mine–it gave me the slip one night. I’d thought i could allow myself one unguarded dream, woke to the baying of dogs & the beating of a hundred pairs of wings–pigeons with their automatic laughter. I had to go live among the graves, where no one looks for a wife.

It’s been months now. Years, even. Time again when night turns the crests of the mountains white like the hands of God on the horizon, his bared knuckles.

One morning the vines lie limp & dark six months after setting the one-eyed lumps in the furrow. And just now, my long-fingered rake lifting a clump of dirt has uncovered a miniature cry, a voice coming out of the ground right at my feet. Do earthworms or beetle grubs speak?

On my knees, plucking the stones from their beds i’ve unearthed a half-size infant’s foot & grasping it around the ankle with a gentle tug, look– i’ve rescued a tiny naked girl the very color of clay. She lies in the crook of my arm & returns my gaze like the cistern where i draw water.

I’ll take her back to my charnel house. She will grow fat on boiled potatoes & teach me how to interpret this ceaseless buzzing of the dead who are said to sleep.