Notes for Esoteric Destinies

November 1, 2023

The day grows out of itself in stages like a snake shedding skin, inky blue-black sky against a scarcely visible horizon beginning to peel itself back in layers, becoming ever lighter and more translucent until the first thin streaks of sunlight filter through the pale violet haze of sunrise.

Sometimes the spirits confide secrets in a language that has no words but sounds deep and blue and dark as the inside of eyelids lost in sleep.

I cannot see their stillness but I feel it:

Here, a shimmering landscape caught in the tear of a young girl, there, a multiverse trapped in the eyes of a fly;

Bleak streets wrapped in exhaled cigarette smoke; yellowing folds of a handkerchief crusted with the dry roar of mucous,; blood spat onto white bathroom tile; the empty space of a window that makes it useful as do spokes in a wheel.

All through the night, a hiss of stars,
the she-sells-seashells sibilance
soft as mist across the sullen moors.

Is it Winter? 

Contrive to warm me in this monarchy of time where the hours pass like minutes and seasons may be one thing, then become another, opposite to each other.

			Or apposite.

Is it Winter? 

Contrive to warm me, Sir. 

Heat stones, dress my bed with heavy drapes, pile the blankets high, and lend me the heat of your skin.

I want your warmest part so long as there’s no danger to it.

Heat stones for my bed, I say. 
Warm me or be gone. 
If your exit be soon, please…
dim the lights and bolt the door.