Emily Winters                                                                                                             

“Bleak House”

Dampness that clings to your clothes,

The uninvited guest that enters your home

Wiping its dew-slicked fingers

On the rug by your hearth;

Seeping into your bones as the fog unfurls

Like a great and brittle storybook.

The cloak that mingles with the wind

Cast by the gallop at which you progress

Through the cobblestone

Alleys.

Molten embers alight

Suspended like stars in the murky shadows

Under your hood.

Your steed, more nightmare than horse,

Breathes out and in armfuls of murk,

Scooping out the chill

And filling in the night with brief flashes of color,

A fire cracker’s staccato pulse,

Clandestine embers of life thriving in the greyscale.

The bitter scent of time on the horizon,

Cloves and cinnamon that burn your head

And the sound a penny makes

As it drops in wide open spaces,

Invading your dreams

With echoes of melancholy

As it repeats the resonating footfalls of the hooves.

Gathering about you your cloak of ink,

And ducking your crown to impale the wind

With antlers of pellucid camouflage,

Your mount and you spur on

And on and on…

Desperately searching for rumored green pastures

And standing stones cast of precious rocks,

Endlessly questing, wading through the mist,

Seeking to crouch among the greener grass

Somewhere where the bleakness shan’t find you home.