Sloth

It was the missing decade of my life that came back, late on one clammy night. Wearing your visage of a foraging girl at the foot of a tranquil Vesuvius. Spent though I was, for those decades still with me, I sat awake listening to the warmth of open windows. The decade came to me, in figments and memories wheezing a few questions. This room is known to me, as is the night, as is the flaying heat, and the carved words on the creaking charpoy by some distant uncle. I melded with the light squeezing through into this dark, sulphurous room like an exile away from my maker. The decade came to me and sang lullabies of princes who never were. I have kept my vigil until the mirror ran dry and returned to sand. The decade wears me now as I am, the hunting boy by a shimmering Ganges. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 07/05/2017