Immortal Beloved

Immortal Beloved

The lights cast shadows but not enough.
Blood trickles out of her nose as she breaths
heavy, laboriously
Back flexes, muscles taught.

Later, after we have dressed her in the white light cast by our headlamps through the soft quiet rain,
we see that her legs are broken, one hip disjointed. Internal bleeding. Ruptured intestines.

We don't know that now as we walk across the gravel road.
We know the salty taste of tears mingling with the pungent smell of blood.
We know the sound of her family calling, just beyond the lights of the car.
Stomping hooves in moist earth.
Snorting through wet air.
"We smell you, we know where you are."

I cover my mouth with my hand, human wails into the night,
knees on cement,
my shadow shading her eyes from the light.

"I am sorry for my culture."
"I am sorry for my culture."
"I am sorry for my culture."
It flows, a mantra through my head. over and over.
It is true.

Alex kneels next to her. Hand on her rising and falling chest.
We look at one another. We know.
Time passes and we do not move.
She is calm.

The cut is small and her breath leaves through the incision.
in and out
in and out
in
and
out.

Life's blood moving too,
a stream out of her body, pooling next to her, sinking into the gravel and into the earth.

Hands on ribs. We wait.

Slowly life leaves, the snorts from the forest cease, her breathing slows with her heart beat.

And with the final breath I feel the release of energy, like a supernova or an eclipse, moving out into everything. I feel it through my body, I feel it with every cell.
They feel it too and I hear them calling once more, loudly.
They know, as I know and the rocks know and the trees know. As everything that can feel knows.