Dark Writings
Four
By Brennan Storr
We have always been here Where the sugar cane sways without wind And the air is heavy and silent As though before a storm. Mornings the same, Brightness creeping through our cottage’s open door. We rise from dreamless sleep on straw pallets Stirring motes of dust into the light. After breakfast Isabel sweeps the floor corn bristles scraping the planks clean Maggie knits, clicking needles mending that which is worn. I watch over them both. In the afternoon we run in the fields breathlessly playing hide and seek Our laughter rising above The whisper of dried grass We have been alone together so long our memories are withered What is left comes through like bursts Of static from distant stars – an embrace, tears, the sound of rain Once upon a time we sought Escape from this place, this life By rope, by knife, by stone and we came by violence unto peace Yet every time we woke again Rising from our pallets to find The bodies where they dropped And our world unchanged. Now Death has become our companion, The fourth sister in our forever, And the only thing we still fear Is that we may outlive Her too. We run past the eucalyptus tree Where, dried by the sun, we hang Three pretty parchment scarecrows In white linen dresses Down the hill to the pond we skip across our own backs White linen lily pads, our Long flaxen hair streaming in clear water Into the vastness of a world we Did not create and do not understand. Into straw, and dust, and silence And the smell of wildfire when the moon is full. We have always been here Where the sugar cane sways without wind And the air is heavy and silent As though before a storm. We have always been here. We always will
Brennan Storr is a Storyteller, producer and co-host of @theghoststoryguys podcast and author of: A Strange Little Place: The Hauntings & Unexplained Events of One Small Town
His book can be found on Amazon or Audible