Palimpsest

One morning in late autumn, while the grass is still strewn with last night’s tears, or perhaps in March as the grey afternoon freezes to a close, we will hear the click of the lock in the door as Abraham leaves for the final time.

 

And the radio will still be on, soft and black, churning its hurly-burly into the empty air and a shallow light may drift across the table. The doors will ease themselves on their hinges and the walls settle a little further into the clay and we will rise slowly, unconscious of the geometry in our knees, hearing only the words stitched firmly to our lips and approach the quiet drawer. And with fingers weak as wax we will slide it open stiffly to discover that the knife is no longer there.

 

 

In the unquiet depths the phantom slides from action to unction its myriad fibres trembling in the blackness unseen. The phosphor glow that warms its lightless eyes slips past, irrelevant, towards a further darkness in which to prey. Infinitely brief, its cellular perfection grapples with the saline dust calling all to prayer and the final transformation.

 

 

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.