Notes in Ochre

Chapter 22 - Part 1

Its easy though it seemed so strange to me

Thoroughly crushed under a weight of dreams

Rising transformed into a wight, fever-dream

Haunting, drifting mindless purgatory

In the graveyard, the relic of our home

A place before intended for respite

Become hollowed unmarked ground to altar

Enshrining the Goddess of Ending Love

In places intended for beginnings

We found so many endings cycling

Once more a birth to new devastation

A dance around the violets to pray

In hopes this time it would be different

To deny the looming sense of rotting

Festering feelings resentment pervades

An undoing a spiral our death dance

Duplicitous smiles can hide deep contempt

No willful ignorance can erase loss

A fruitless pilgrimage to forgotten

Bygone eras of promises broken

A life thoroughly devastated cold

Winter blew in visiting once again

Always I found my mind wondering when

We will finally stop circling, my love?

I scrunched my nose up in distaste, then sighed heavily, placing my forehead into the cool center of my palm. After spending the last few days tweaking the rhyme I had initially been working on, I felt no better about it. Though it felt a little less on the nose and a bit more poetic, I still found it severely lacking. The tune, though morose, was intended as healing for me, but these words certainly did not convey that. I felt I had managed to write a funerary dirge instead. I groaned in renewed exasperation.

I decided to take this break and let my mind wander. I had spent so much time in my former life avoiding the uncomfortable spaces of my dismantled marriage. I had made many excuses, mainly to myself, and promises that things would get better if I only worked harder. In result, I spent an incredible amount of time in that desolate place built only of hope and founded on denial. It was a fools errand to believe I alone could fix what only two could make, but nevertheless, I had beat my head against the walls of my own personal delusion for too many years. Still, I wanted to honor that learning, and properly so. After all, that lesson had an entire life previously lived.

Well, now it was time to focus on this one. Sighing heavily once more, I secured my bolt action ink pen along the spine of my notebook and folded it into the pages of a half-filled journal. I only recently discovered these two treasures hidden in my room beneath an odd assortment of rubble and objects in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I tucked it securely in the crook of my elbow and tight against my waist for fear of losing either. Both the pen and notebook had been a stroke of luck discovery, what with little means or time to make paper in such a place as Endvall and even fewer to make pens, the little set felt as dear to me as a gift from the Goddess herself. I felt more complete with it at my disposal since I now had a place to write both my music and practice lessons for the day. It was only slightly too large for my pocket and though I did not know for sure, I assumed it's original owner had likely been a man as men's pockets were oft designed slightly bigger than the ones even simple women's clothing sported. Though, my dress today had no time nor place to sport anything as practical as pockets. It was much more concerned about appearing completely frivolous with its embarrassingly shocking combination of voluminous layered bright orange tulle and dusty blue lace trim. I felt absolutely ridiculous as I radiated more light than the sun itself whilst gliding down the hallways with as much dignity as I could muster. It was the latest gift to me from Uther. Though I had managed to talk myself into adorning the ridiculous garment as a show of my appreciation for his attentions, I was beginning to wonder whether he had bestowed it upon me from admiration as he had repeatedly claimed, or if he might actually harbor a grudge against me. I intended to interrogate him on the very matter, and soon.