Knowing

It was the gaze that gave her away. Eyes upon him in the forest. She saw him there, and he felt it all at once. Just before, his eyes passed over her form without immediate knowing. Dappled sunlight, cast shadows of leaves, her skin. The knowing caught up with him all at once and his legs stopped dead. His eyes rolled back over in a rush and she was there wearing the kind of curiosity bestowed by a secluded vantage. He half-expected her to turn and disappear into that foliate backdrop, but his knowing did not stir her.

Theirs

He concluded theirs
was of greater magnitude
Kept
in a vessel all its own,
apart from the rest
He thought holding it up
to compare it with the others,
did it no justice at all
To do so,
would be to cast a shadow,
to drown a nurturing light
No,
this was separate,
in a vessel all its own
Ornamental, yet functional
Bordered by copper and lead,
a chamber of ideal conditions
And there,
it incubated

Customers

Their eyes, somehow cavernous, blinked frequently - as if pleading. It was desperation there. Urgency too. Sometimes they'd just toss the substance on the glass, once a rich yellow of luxurious splendor, now tarnished grey or brown by the squalid environs they inhabited. They needed to trade it, so they could trade some more. Who knows where they slept? Somewhere you wouldn't. It'd put them in some heavy-limbed half sleep after that initial euphoric rush. Those first few seconds made it all worth it.

I can't decide. Conflicted all the time. There are fleeting moments of rage for their self indulgence and inconsideration. Most of the time it's pity.

Cormac

"They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."