Franklin Mott

(where are you where are you where are you)

The air. He could sense the night. He was falling into time again. The blood

(her hers your blood i want your blood iwantyou)

had come without recognition, the blood had been taken automatically. Fortunate blood. A (shovel shovel metal prodding and that SCENT suddenly that scent and part of him unliving living part of him had taken)

It had been a child. Unsafe to play in forests at night. Didn’t children know. Didn’t children know to keep their blood safe. Well. Lucky for him. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Could always count on ignorance. (but where is but where were) And another face. More than a child, he realized, there had been more. More blood. Another face. Then gone.

And the blood rising to his head the blood swimming through his body (like breath new breath just breathe something beyond dirt good good it felt good), and he found himself in place. Against a tree, back in the hiding again, but this time above the ground, this time with eyes to the sky. He sighed.

Somewhere, vaguely, he remembered.

A face. A voice. Before.

(i feel you i scent you i will always know you)

The healing was beginning in earnest (blood blood blood of a blood of the life), and he found his senses returning with remarkable swiftness. After so much time covered in earth, his life drained almost to emptiness, all taste and smell and sight and everything dull, the world seemed now to explode around him. The sky pulsed with a thousand fantastic colors (it had all been dark and muted grays with muddy red and the memory of pain the fire of unending ache), and he could scent the slow growth of trees the quick pulse of birds and, more removed, the vital beat of humans. It was almost like being born again. Like the day he had grasped a new life.

His thoughts, fragmented for so long, formed slowly into coherence. Who and where he was. And struggling upward, why (eyes strength resilience and flesh and flame and desire) he was in that place and in that state. And her face grew a name and her name grew a scent and a feel and a weight a pull a shivering, and all the traces of her grew into a whole.

“Tara.” The first sounding of his cracked voice, and he felt something that was sadness and abandonment touched with joy.

Somewhere, she was out there. (but time the passage of time did he know how long didn’t know how long how long below BUT NEVER but no. believe) She was out there, and he was free again.

(always, always, always)