Book One: To the lighthouse.

Sometimes, at night, the wolf is at the door of the gallery.

In the beginning, after the end, I looked up at stars and blocked out the street lamps with my right hand. I never learned where the big dipper or Ursa Major was. I don’t see it, even now, through squinted eyes and the smallest hole I make with my index finger and thumb.

No one is spared at night.

She thinks this: “the love it takes to become a man.” She thinks this from her chamber, in the beginning, after the end. She will name her child Benjy. I know he is named after the brother of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Benjamin.

I think this: “the love it takes to destroy a man.”

And the secret that I know will be buried with me when they fit me into the wooden box like a piece of a jigsaw. When I was twelve I ripped out the hands of the family clock. I thought I could stop time. This thing that seemed to flow to everyone else but me. This made up thing. I wanted it to stop from going forward. I wanted it to run backwards so I could erase what I saw in that room between my brother and my sister. He is Laertes and she is Ophelia in a consanguineous marriage. Genesis was torn up with extreme prejudice by a pauper’s calloused hands.

Book Two: As The Stars Fall

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day misfortune will get tired and leave, and then time becomes his misfortune. But time is dead as long as it’s being counted by little wheels. Only when the clock stops does time come to life.

Ophelia.

and Laertes.

Diminishing without progress.

For me, the line of this history is broken up in pieces of time and scrambled. Ophelia and Laertes. Time has laid hold of a frozen speed. Time is that which separates. We can no longer enter into our past loves and so we find anguish. It’s not when you realize that nothing can help you–religion, pride, love, sorrow, anything. It’s when you realize you don’t need any aid. And then the stars will fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Source: Thistlebrook