There is no grief strewn across the fabric of this october morning. Crisp it maybe in its rising, fresh and pleasant maybe the northern winds that come atop and settle in the bloated belly of this valley. What clings to the underside of it all is only the tell of a storm. There is no melancholy in the shuffling of your rubber slippers across the gravel floor, no comfort is the toss and turn of sheets; the engulfing and abandoning of summer blankets. I know what you think of me, i have picked the fruits of your mind, dissected the callouses of language, the spasmodic recoil of your eyes; the ceaseless perennial incline of your neck. i have cured them under the golden sun, letting the world’s bloodstream steep in their scent, then ground into a fine powder like salt but its not salt, i have let it dissolve in a cup of water and swallowed it all in one big gulp. I have let it seep; leech into lung and lowland alike. i have consigned it to crystallize the margins of it all. Behold this salt mine you have inspired in me. Birthed twice i am a two headed calf. but there is no grave for me, no banquet of stars twinkles in my wake. This bloated valley, beneath its martian carapace has severed the jugular of light. All the night does is melt and melt, drips on the arc it longs for submersion, it wishes of becoming. And what does the night take when its a stranger shunned at your door steps, it takes the melancholy with it, burnishes the horizon of an inevitable dawn and all you will have left is a butter knife honed. Maybe if it was less compliant; the wild expanse of me, the stars wont turn their glassy eyes away in bitterness.