THE GHOST OF SOME OTHER RED CHAMBER
- Apr 24
- 1 min read
By himragged
I awake from a feeling of midnight’s wine-intoxicant shroud of mull seed-cake, dreaming again I was my sis/ter, dreaming again I brought somebody else home, finger the surgeon’s trans scar, reach out for you, touch you in your sleep, but see the winged shadow shimmering in summer’s dead air.
My groin is wet.
Blood.
Black wax.
She stands, watching, hungers for the fouled world we have made today, or its corruption is found in tomorrow’s false dawn. I have read of her. They say she is the truth uncovered in Baal-hazor, the wonder gone burning Bethlehem, the mystery who conquered Babylon. Such is the ancient twilight of her,
bellowing
as of ancient ectoplasm. She knows that men are no different from boys, their screams summon no sunday wife but her. Their secret places also arise, ripen, ready for her crystal scythe. Her sound of flies. They whisper mother into her dark, her chasm, her tide months of bleeding and breasts. Her power of life and death.
Sacrifice.
In time, it will all make sense. But I have only moments, awakening in the middle of the night, mother’s blood gurgling through me to seek the shape of her swirling, her desert tongue, as the dawn is breaking and she is beside me, now fading, gone. And the last words on her lips are try harder, son of butchery.
Believe.
But she is the ghost of some other red chamber.