mictlan

When I sit out in the darkness of the wee hours, smoking, the fireflies accept me as one of their own. Red to their green, a firefly from Mars.

The wee hours come after the witching and belong to no one. It is not a time for people; not for those of us who have to get up in the mornings and go to work, make a living, pay the bills. The wee hours are sacred, but sacred to nothing; a covenant, but a covenant with no one. Haunt them, to be sure, but return to them night after night only at costs yet undetermined. And still, how much of a souk soul must you have to measure everything in terms of cost? Things happen, is all.

The wee hours are silent, an open invitation to hear the noise and thunder in your head. Hear the voices, learn to pick them out from the pounding, remember faces. It is possible, now, to close your eyes and reconstruct the universe from the sound of a cat's footstep; from the crackling tindersticks of tobacco burning in your fingers; from the wind shredded through the knife-sharp leaves of the bamboo.

I open my eyes again, and cup a firefly in my palm for a brief moment, remembering fireflies long past and a field under stars, and a girl-child that I offered the gift of fire. Times past. The wee hours call for remembrance, neither nostalgia nor wallowing; remembrance is a holy art. Things must be remembered, from time to time, or else it is as if they never were.

Someday too, in some future flame, I will remember tonight. I will remember these vigils. I will remember you.

Tonight, were you there, you could have seen sparks red and green reflected in my eyes. Something for you to remember me by, in the time to come.

posted by: mictlantecuhtli at 01:58 | link | comments (14) |

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