We Sit In The Car Awhile. Its Quiet. Dark. The Rain Runs Down The Windshield In Little Rivulets And Rivers,

We sit in the car awhile. It’s quiet. Dark. The rain runs down the windshield in little rivulets and rivers, an intricate little geography that draws in so much of my attention that I don’t realize she’s talking for a full minute.

I don’t ask her to repeat herself, much as I want to. She talks when she’s nervous, fiddles. I can see her rubbing her hands together, clasping and unclasping, looking out into the darkness. A lone streetlight down the road throws amber light over everything, everything wet and dark. More droplets racing down the glass.

She kisses me. I don’t fight it, or press back. I can feel the fear in it, this moment of reaching out. It feels like falling. Her big, brown eyes are damp. I’m afraid too. We watch each other, face to face. She looks tired, so tired— do I look like that? Is this what happens to people who—

The streetlamp flickers, and dies. We’re plunged into darkness. I can feel my heartbeat pulsing, my mouth is dry. I realize I can’t hear the rain falling on the car anymore, or see any tracing rivulets.

And then, from everywhere, is light.

The towers wait, the tombs hum. The fortresses crumble, the dams rot. This decay is beautiful, this decay is endless and stalwart. It cracks and cleaves and splits, it’s tendrils push up, out, sling across, surge through. Sunlight and the drip-drip-drip of tenacious waters. Did Rome at its height dream that one day so little would remain, did the great statues abandoned in eternal sands know that their truest accomplishment is to warn of grandiose nature made frivolous, pathetic, from marching time? Our fate remains the same, irrelevant and brief— and beautiful.

I sit on the ledge, surrounded by concrete and glass— irrelevant monoliths and irreverent designs, all inhospitable, all hostile. Featureless as the faces of the dead. Snow comes down like pale, cold stars weaving through chilly air. Flex my fingers, see my breath spiral against cold air, my heart beating steadily.

Cold metal against my skin. Heavy.

Does anybody else get really antsy when they’re feeling lonely? I don’t know how to stop feeling like this. I have trouble sitting still, I endlessly scroll, I go back and forth in my mind. Dunno what to do.

Hey, so I have a website now!

Lots of craziness there. Check me out at https://thesovereignarchive.blogspot.com/?m=1!!!!!

I was just a boy. A young mind brimming with questions in a small town tucked away from the world by lonely willow-choked roads and thick swamps. Seems so long ago.

I remember the reverend, all red-faced and swollen above me, like an ugly moon. Angrier words that lashed out at the room beyond him, turned the crowd to a thrall with answers that even as a kid I knew were unsatisfactory. My mind knew only a future where it seemed that Man had triumphed over God. Man had walked on the Moon, and Man had split the atom for its Promethean gifts. Where was God, I had asked, completely serious, inside a Saturn V, or an H-bomb?

The lashings my father gave me for this heresy were not at all delivered in the form of sermon.

I still remember the day. Claustrophobic heat that drains your muscles. Turns every breath shallow lest you drown in humidity and sorrows. I skipped church now regularly, slipping away into all consuming greenery. My worn bag stuffed with the essentials for any young would-be apostate: warm bottles of Coke, smuggled turkey sandwiches, books about men trudging on red Martian sands, and a fishing pole. Perfect.

Somewhere far away cracked thunder as I caught glimpses of nasty thunderhead clouds between bayou canopy. Deep within me stirred superstitious fear of righteous lightning to drop me dead— but I pushed it away and continued the track, eager to pluck anything from the river. Each step through the muck lessened my worry, whistling.

The sky darkened. Deepened into bruised, ominous darkness. I felt the thunder in my belly. I grew frantic as any boy would, bravado and cheer as banished as the sun had been. Crashing through brush, trying to retrace my steps— something exploded. I was thrown. I could feel the heat of flame, sense fire in some primeval heart within my being as it sprang, ferocious and eager. Through half lidded eyes I glimpsed inferno. Struggled. Fought to stand.

I ran.

I hit something. Hard. Landed in the muck right on my rear just as rain began to pelt the good earth in droves. Lightning split the sky’s imitation of night, I scrambled, and looked up.

It was a woman. Tall as any man I’d ever met. Skin pale like moonlight, and hair pristinely golden and long, rippled with crimson wildfires and blue moss. Crowning her head were perfect, black antlers, elegant and regal. She was bare. My heart thudded in tandem to the storms song, and I was stuck fast, enraptured. Silvered eyes watched me— looked beyond me. To something I can’t possibly understand.

We started at one another. She tilted her head, just slightly. All around us the world creaked and groan as hungry wildfire snatched up everything in sight, turned all things living to choking ash. She was unfazed. Serene. I wept silent tears. Unblinking.

And then, without a sound, without so much as a breath— a single upheld pale hand closed, and the fire was gone. Thin, blackened trees whispered in the faintest breeze. Impossible. A miracle.

The woman— the goddess?— looked down at me in the mud. The silver eyes, a faint smile, and with quiet footsteps, disappeared into the tangle.

I’ve told no one else of this in my sixty years of life. Who would believe an old man about his forest savior? The fire was unwitnessed by anyone when I scrambled back into town, and my only greeting was a cuff on the head for missing another service.

My property, my home— it’s there. Built at the place I first witnessed something beyond explanation. And every night, under the rain or unblinking stars, I sit out on the deck, amidst a chorus of singing creatures shrouded in shadow. Waiting.

Hoping.