Sylvia

The clock wants to say that it's way past midnight. The street is empty and silent; the dogs howl, sometimes, on their own. I wonder what they want to say, if anything at all. I am alone in my bed, calling for sleep and still living in denial.

She sings madness to me. Her words are tuneless, like the staccato rhythm of nervous speech. But she is intoxicating, like the sweet pull of hemlock; her voice flows all over me, like the slow draw of honey. I do not understand her. What does she mean to say? I wonder when she stuck her head in the oven, looking for heaven, that day, had she been wild haired? Had she painted her lips that morning? What colours had the curtains been? The God she sought must have been cruel to keep her hanging, like a marionette snipping at her own strings helplessly, uselessly. But she is long gone now, you know it. Or is she?

For her words I do not understand, but her rhyme weaves like colours all spiralling into black, all around me; the lines echo through the empty house. She is the melody of the dark nights, black and sweet and sticky like molasses, the tune to my despair, serenading me with her own. Her madness calls, soothingly, irresistibly; it calls out, in her love songs, in her haunted musings. You are mad, I tell her. I don't understand your love. I don't understand you. She smiles at me through her dark locks, sweetly, and says, You do, dear. You always do. Because your love, it is just like this.