a city of dark lights

Dark-lanterns over the incumbent Thames.

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You are in the habit of reminding me of what I am not, of places that I no longer see or feel. Such is your custom. For ten nights I have talked with you in dreams, and woken to see the form of your absence, as if the outline of your body was traced on the floor with chalk, your heart on the ground next to mine.

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There is an unknown place where the unrelenting mind finds you. The green in the blue washing up, sloshing against, the steps that lead nowhere. Past Cleopatra's needle. Remember? Why would you? There, I saw you with your tangled hair talking to someone deep in the shadows, knotting his unsuspecting heart, and it is there I first thought of murder. Perhaps I, too, am but a shade or the drowned out life of another, my words like the petals you aimlessly fling into the deeps.

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There, under the bridge, where the hidden river meets the Thames. Like the dark waters under the land, unredeemed, I waited. In the dead of night, your voice distant and strange, like a foreigner in my city. Speak, now, or forever bite your tongue, since the midnight hour is upon us. And the ruins of generations is in my blood, slowing my fingers, darkening my face, sharpening my eyes...