Chapter Text
Even in the dark there is a light of some kind,
as there ever is over snow.— Bram Stoker, Dracula
There are dead bones buried in this ground, the only question
being how old they are — and the only answer being
who cares, raise your knife up and see
if you will join them yet.
An enemy’s sliced head a pierced tree bark a vibrating knife
and the boy a good twenty meters away who threw it dead center
because he was not ready for you to join them yet.
He hates you like he’s never going to lose you,
with petulance and in overabundance,
like a spoiled child at the loathing table.
(And he loves you like he loves getting hungry on winter nights,
because it is, all of it, unfair and your fault anyway,
his belly hollowed out in your likeness. A painful, welcome fire.
Not that you would know.)
Two nights ago, your weight on him, his bared teeth and bare throat
and you not knowing what you were doing here, where the instinct came from,
if you had wanted to tear it open before.
You can hear his breathing again, laboured between the ground and your knee.
His ribs moving. You had put your hand there, over his heart.
You are such a bastard, he’d spat, and you had thought Yes,
congratulations, this is true at least, I’m selfish and awful, a father-killer,
and your sense of self renewed, you had found the strength to bite at his neck,
he had found the hate to kiss you with enough force to bleed.
Now battlefield, fighting, the snow piling up at your feet,
and your eyes meet above the handle of his knife.
He’s covered in blood, but you swear
the smear over his lip is yours.
You’re selfish and awful, you take and you restore,
you wake and you want more. You rip
the knife out of the tree.
(Not that you would know, but he eyes
the blood on your fingers and swears it’s his.)
You throw the knife back at his feet. Don't fight fair, you think,
don't make the same mistakes your father did.
You are not ready for him
to join the bones yet. You still both have a ways to go,
and you would like your own death to be interesting.