Nickels.

Nickels

Even without in the lamp of the mirror a voice called, covered in treacle and tar, the shadows flicker soft like moths dancing beneath the stars. Little curtains whispered in the wind. Drawing back onto the old stone of the factory where years before Annie had turned the handle calm as moonlight. Greys first streaks ambled their way through Annies raven hair. Beneath drifting clouds she wandered, wondering if this year was to be her first. The curse of solomon swept like a storm in her royal blue amazon river veins. She the cats mother had spent a whole lifetime looking for that rabbit. The white twitch season, the hole that folded, wrapping her in a soft blanket so sweet, soothing in its balm, the warm fuzzy tingles of sleep, the distant powder from the mountains of moor, singing to the birds. Home, was this green ocean. The fields of emeralad jackets that taught Annie to strum the harp. Splashing notes spoke to the past, winks to Johnny Fa and little Miheal, the boy who with his rooster bested May Nab to become the next tinker king. Cold ice, the warmth of the violin melted, into the walls of the factory. The smallest viola to ever chance. Little hands, paws of work, spun the jute, wheels turned as is the cycle of the sun and moon, Dianea to Apollo, the bright waltz of the stars life to death, the wheel turns ever on.

In a cloth sack by the harbour where the trawler men left to hunt the whale, harsh months without dry land, scratchy breath and scrappy chins, if only i had found that rabbit, Annie thought, then remembered, the master of the candle, who had told her, whilst deftly flicking a coin across his knuckles, that the trick nowadays was to follow foxes, but you must be quick. Kubachi.

Fast, Annie crawled out of the cloth sack and struck up her pace, if she could move like a cloud she would have no need to wonder, as she just flew on by, above the rows of tennament houses, out to the country the surfing trees and waterfalls, where the ghosts shone, haunted pebbles and smooth plum stones. Some with faces like Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen.

Factory medicine, no complaints the sugar dreams of bowls and spoons and cups of pearl. Annie dripped into another world the sunken carpet at the bottom of the frog pond, a world filled with sound like blazing catherine wheels spinning whirls and pops that danced across her senses like the tingling taste buds of a tongue lapping all over a batteries acidic stinging metal. Here the glasses in front of her eyes turned from yellow to green back to yellow, the spyglass stirred up memories in her mind in the same way that picking corn in a field can make you recall long forgotten days.

Annie had forgoten where she put her teeth, and couldnt conjur up the boy who she had given her marbles too. Just to hold and keep safe, for a little while. Like nursing a piece of ash in the fire, teasing a splinter trapped beneath the skin, drawing symbols backward, to magic a pair of horses galloping faster than the rain fall, relentless the night was dark blue, only a few, slender whisps of cloud like crafty slips of stream...

The hammock floats in the window
a candle burns beside your pillow,
until at once spirits out and you dream
empty mouthed of losing
shiny marbles and boney teeth