What Happens at the End

Before dark. Before help. 

Untangling flakes of hay from rugged twine, chickens cooing in darkness. 

Oral sex as a distortion of the "take impulse," itself a distortion of the idea that one can get or give anything through a body.

Before confusion. Before narrative. 

Brother hemlock. Brother Lucifer.

Pausing atop the icy stairs in darkness, gazing at stars, thinking of the one who is not here in one way, but everywhere in another, as if inescapable or wholly loving.

More tired than I can say at 4 a.m., going downstairs shivering to make coffee, pray and read, feed the horses. 

My limping heart, my staggered soul.

Blue jays in the hemlocks outside the hay loft, reminders we are not alone, and at a minimum, there will always be blue.

Leaving the lights on to see better.

Relating any way possible.

Have I reached the end of the twenty sentences? 

One kneels happily. One slips away on what happens next, neither here nor there, barely aware of what happens at the end.

What happens at the end.

I mean lost, lonely. I mean begin.