Unscrawled Heaven

I find myself still softly searching

For my Delinquent Palaces –

Oh, me too, Emily. Myself the only prince cast out.

The rains have begun at last. I can see the tracers, pale gray lines against the faintly paler sky, as if heaven was a paper slant-ruled for forward-leaning cursive. I want to form each letter slowly, perfectly, each one dropping to dissolution. Incipit liber primus. Here beginneth Book One.

I crouch by the gutter and dabble my fingers in the clear water: I squint up at the sky, and my eye-sockets fill. Clear ink runs down my cheeks, streams into a thicket of beard. Down at the corner stop someone sneezes, and the brakes of the city bus gasp. Rain. It falleth as the merciful rain of heaven upon the place beneath. And I am the place beneath: my delinquent palaces seem to have deliquesced.

Blowing, sputtering, I reach the shelter of the porch. I want to extend my fingers so that a drop will fall on each fingertip. Thimbles of cold wet water; gloves of rain. O heaven, endless white unscrawled heaven, when can I begin to write?