The Pendulum begins to count -

2016

There is a clock in this room, it is its sole inhabitant, I count for nothing, the clock counts more loudly than I. I hear her in the kitchen, she is cooking something I feel should be a stew, but it does not sound stew-like, it sounds much less heavy than flesh and broth. The house into which I have found my way carries a scent of familiarity, but nothing I see or touch or hear knows me any more than I know it. The sound of the clock, red numbers in the shadows, like an owl's eyes making out its prey, marking it, sings to me, it sings of a before and an after and an in between, a still not yet. Whispered so quietly, the words have no end or beginning to them. "Is that you?" asks the girl preparing something else than stew, she asks uncertainly, her footfalls draw nearer and as if pulled in by invisible hands, I sink into the wall and I am gone. The last thing I hear, wings carrying me through the bricks and through the mortar, too, since I am lighter than all existing things, is the girl telling no one in particular, least of all herself, "It is never you, is it?"

What is forbidden utterly

1836

The boy knows nothing, I know even less. I know the sway of his hair and the greenery in his irises, I know how strong his arm is, when he puts down doe and stag. I know the strength of the distance he puts between us, when I finally dare to come close to his chair and he still does not recognise my efforts, even less my existence. He has heard of my kind, but I am air to him, perhaps the first leaves of the birch, the last rowan berries to feed a robin, a starling or my sisters in whom he only faintly believes. As such, his faith in me must be even fainter. I am a winged thing like them. Let me exist in your dreams, at least, I whisper right next to his ear, causing him only to stand up, move through my left arm, the adjoining shoulder, the side of neck. Is this what we call a butterfly kiss, I wonder, I want, I wilt a little, my wings fall. Could you not be a winged thing, too?