Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain


In the winter she did not shy. It was a season she came to love, even to desire, to run through the snow.. it was the lure of being Hidden. The icicle touch of her own fingers to throat. The landscape that was white and somehow pure. The illusion of.

Tattoo needles were locked away, so too clay and pages of stillborn songs. All the professions that gave her no lasting joy. They were simply skills for whence she might need them. Now, she needed none of them.

Instead, with part of the money left from the last show on the open road, she bought herself an old car. Of course, the only one left in the lot was a white hearse, who she called Joy, ironically, and drove home with those faded red seats, now pink, and the interior smelled just like 1968, and it gave her a thrill. Sunshining memories. The dance of recollection, underfoot and between the lines, pasted over faces of familiarity, but through the windshield was just the glaze of the street, shadows across and passing, as she pulled along the drive.

Later, upon the small balcony, she observed the paces below with a cigarette burning on the slick of her bottom lip. The sky was soft with unnamed colours, and the streets were empty. There was a peace in Rhy'Din, one she had not felt before in the city.

Like tramps around a halloween gasoline burning trash tin, madness and elegiac in their yipeeing prayer, crows pecked the last of the carcass they fed upon, a stray dog, and took flight.

Lerida watched with a sad smile, the bones and fur of the dog nothing now. Meant nothing of what had been inside. The force of life now gone forever.

A hand to her heart she looked up at the sky, as she always had, and waited until a star came into view. And then she made a wish, something dark, like a secret birthed in the belly of all women, tidal and moonmourning. Her fire deep incantation, wanton with the night. Seaswooning and long lost, she had no shore nor no sea. Just whatever was beneath her feet. But the sky, she had felt, had her, owned her, guided her. Strange solitary pancake makeup face, that moon, watching over.

Turning from the sight below on that empty street worn out in greys, she slid the door shut and carried herself to end and into sleep.

Some folk just have the black luck of arriving in any one place on the tail of a bad wind. Such it was for Sean. He never intentionally sought out the dried grass in life, he didn't hope for the worst, it just seemed that circumstance made a fool of him, or as he had ended up believing, made him a man, just a rough way through.


It was what brought the two together he recalled. He'd come to watch her sing. He'd leave her a tip for a song, and she'd cure his heart for a night; the music rending but then those words would wash up after and sew you right back up. That was the deal. And night after night, chat after chat after an hour of spell binding enchantment from her heart-torn melodies, they'd take a walk and always leave one another with a lingering hug. Never liked to walk away, face their lives at that time, apart. They knew one another inside out. They were kin.


Years had gone by since his very own stint in Desdichado where he'd first met the wild rose, the woman no man could forget with those eyes, that hair, the kinda woman who lived in your dreams, often the wet variety, and though she'd ended up being more of a sister, she still pulled at his heart strings. What her songs did to a man, that voice.

And so it was, ill fated and no surprise, that a green and overcast sky rolled above looking about ready to spew rain and thunder and more snow, gloaming that discouraged a peek from the wheeling stars, as he headed up the drive, engineer boots tugged by that jesting, moaning breeze. Giving a clap to the boot of the hearse parked there, a momentary worry beating with his heart, until he saw the license plate number and gave up a smirk. Figures. Only Leri would have that humour.

A rap of his knuckles against the autumn painted door, a deep and warm brown, and he stepped back and stroked at his chin, a nervous habit.


It'd been so long. He hoped she didn't care he'd never written. He was here. And flesh counted more than ink. Well, so he figured. Dark eyes gazed at that door, and for itching second, he felt more than a little guilty. Jail hadn't been kind to his heart, or his head, but she'd pulled him out of dark water enough times that he owed her a visit, owed her what he planned on giving.