...well... a poem in the making, perhaps! :)) This is about as Halloweeny as I get: boo! xx

EDENARNIA


The smash-and-grab of a storm-ridden sunset was stealing like knives through windows of his lakeside cabin. A small pile of ash was long-cold in the grate, his arid mouth tasting its bittersweet as he slowly drew shut the door on the all-but-empty room and hammered the newly-carved nameplate into its timbers.

His calloused hands were still bleeding and splintered from all their recent months of work: exactly a year to complete the fine armoire he had just left in the cabin’s brightest corner. Its twin, sculpted doors faced out across ruffling waters over which the new moon would soon rise like a gash in the dark silk of sky.

With exhaustion in his heart and arms, he trudged back towards the Big House. His collar was drawn against the wind as it creaked through the trees – building now exactly as it had last year. Back then, his nails were smooth: cuticles like tonight’s crescent moon, fingers used to wielding no more than a pen before this fevered desire to axe, chop then delicately carve. The snap of twigs beneath his feet was like the crack of brittle bones.

On this night twelve months’ ago, she had shimmied into a midnight-blue gown, striking a pose behind her feathered Venetian mask; “Tempest’s so fitting”, she laughed, “for a Halloween ball!” Later, rosy and flushed from the dance, he had waltzed her into the marbled hall (spangled beneath its dangling chandelier), grabbed a fur from the groaning coat-rack and rustled her down the misty track through the spinney to the cabin.

There they spilled fresh cones from their pockets and lit a small blaze. Then slipped from bear skin… slept in bare skin.

In the grey of early morning, the old pine had felled her as she ran lightly ahead in the chase back to the house. He attacked its blackened trunk in grief-stricken frenzy before turning his pain to craft: seasoning its elegant knotted timbers with aromatic oils, fashioning an exquisite cabinet for the sole occupancy of her mask and dress.

Here they hang now in their new place of dark. Tonight they breathe again with remembrance of her warm, soft curves, wafting her scent that still lingers in their tucks, beads and intimate seams. The dress of midnight blue will sway and shimmer with the glow of ruddy sparks from their fir-cone fire, glisten from the spills of black cherry wine dripped from moist lips, clinked from smeared glasses.

And pips will gleam in the core of the apple they shared – putting down roots, sprouting shoots of unseasonal green.