at night I hover above the beams you’ve hammered
between heaven and your spread silk coverlet
the air, which is nothing to you, is everything to me
the wood, which is something hard to you, is nothing to me
I slip fingers beyond the pine knots and holding on to breezes
with my other hand see the dust dancing between the straw
reach down for your sleeping face
eager for your exhalations those moist, warm castoffs
they are spirals of rips bits of soft driftwood
eddying out from your body discarded as casually
as you threw down my bones wrapped in kimono-rags
cast away as you did your horse fleeing on the road
from my father’s huntsmen its lungs bursting beneath your body
nightly your dead horse and I call to each other strung singing
as we are from bough and beam sometimes hanging still as skulls
above your head as you sleep, as you ride, as you love
others far better than you ever loved us
tonight is the farthest I have ever stretched from the rafters
listening from the hackberry tree the horse whinnies in the cold
your eyelids flicker open as my cold lips fall on yours
no she does not even roll over as I steal your last breath
Inspired by The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits: an Encyclopedia of Mononoke and Magic by Matthew Meyer
© 2020 Betsy Aoki
