Emptiness
There you are, absence, there you are, soothing, black, and gone, there you are, more quiet than the thin dark mushrooms rising in a circle on the lawn at night. I call you and I draw you down, draw you close.
Emptiness, emptiness, I lift your black host in my hands, in honor, arms tense. Fingers long and shaking, I stroke your lack of outline and smell your faintest odor of cold and rain and the divine. I enfold you in my hands — look there between the crevasses created by my thumbs — I see you, your dark honor and your dignity. I have you, emptiness, I take you every night to my room where you assist me. You snuff out the candles and croon no lullaby, blacken my eyes and take me silently to dreamless sleep.
Catherine Ednie (louder) works as a systems analyst in the New York metropolitan area. Her work appears in In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Literature (Impassio Press), and in various locations online.
qarrtsiluni 