You Should Know…

…reality.

“Where are you going?”

He stopped. Beneath the malevolent black of hooves, the first flowers of spring withered and curled, dying slow deaths like charred ashes.

“Where I go.”

“Where is that?”

Horns pierced the air, a cruel collection of desert-bleached bones.

“I go down into deepest sleep.”

“But where is that?”

His eyes narrowed, dead the way the hopeless remnants of leaves cling to winter-cold branches.

“Down.” His voice was what trees must have sounded like as they grew, a low, deep rumbling. “Down in you, where you are quiet and small.”

Slow-boat show-boat approach, heat baked from his flanks like a man with fever, tar-black eyes amazingly bright on her. “I have been in you a thousand times. Every night you sleep, I am in the deepest core of you.”

“Is that a lie?” She asked, taking in a deep breath. He smelled of rot – a sweet smell, like bananas that have sat out too long.

“Do you want it to be..?“