Moon Tides

A heavy sickness, owing itself to the cruelty of the cosmos, pursued me. Frantic as a wet feline, I was sure my hot-heeled hopes would be realized.

Breathlessly climbing the blue-gray hills of a tearful dreamscape, I searched with gravel in my knees. The sky drenching the tear-stained mountains with no mind to the muddiness created.

I was left to look in empty houses, in the darkest terrain of my dreams, only to find you had vanished.

A magnetic pull whisks me from the mountains, as if from the inside an invisible force, taking aim across vast increments of space and time. I feel it pulling me into another place.

Like some sort of quantum particle, my consciousness connected to the experience of another.

Only to hear the rallying cry of an uprising escape my voice. The other women, as captured chattel, once beautiful and proud geisha now follow my ascent from the dark underbelly of trade.

You weilded the sword of the samurai, slicing first through my womanhood with a pain so sharp, I must take leave of this place.

Then, a flash of light illuminates a circle of men in laughter, under the canopy of bile green and the figures in fatigues. Tin tags donned upon each chest, in the event the deathly doses of war render us unrecognizable.

Unshakably certain in that moment that the face of a stranger was you, and laying my hand upon your leg in comraderie we evaporate into a darker place.

A terrible weight upon me, and my backside to the floor, I feel your breath upon my face, foul-smelling from rot and swilling ale. A rage so hot boils inside me as I feel your weight crushing the breath from my lungs as I am violated while the others stand by, cheering you on.

I feel my anger and despair come untangled, finally understanding the message

You have been captor, comrade, and culprit. I awake to onerous grief, I have been released as our contract no longer serves me.