The text:
Awakening
It’s winter now three years, and she is stranded swaying with the darkness of her lover in a coop without window, door nor respite. His breath is on her neck and his fingers pierce her head like a bowling ball. His voice surges from her lips, cascading and churning, vespers and curses unknown to her. Fever, illness, fatigue, faintness, bouts of blinding nausea. She sits with him. Under the weight of his iron blanket. Under the cloak of his belief.
When light seeps through the gaps between the door hinges and the floorboards, when the weighted buds appear on the branches like they are full, spilling over with energy, awaiting new blood, a shift will occur, and he’ll fade, as he won’t recognise the glare that blinds him.
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