très riches heures II
the door of october opens to the eldritch light of all that has and might have been. your grandmother sings under her breath from a room you have just left or are leaving; when you turn to meet her there is only a sigh and the smell of her soap. in airports you will see your grandfather, gone these many long years, dragging a case behind him, going — where? anywhere, but going. always moving and never arriving. the month of october is a thirty one day baggage reclamation hall and all your ghosts, your favourites and the ones that scare you most go round and round waiting to be claimed. take your place among them, knees tucked up under your chin so that your trousers do not snag on the moving belt and listen to their deep silences that move through you like the fingers of the wind through bare tree branches, silences which catch.
this month contains all the other months, and every october, forever.
the bell of october tolls muffled like the ones on a black clad funeral horse, his terrifying plumes at his forehead, his blinded eyes. you don’t need to look to see where we are going. we go through october in staggers.
october is forever while it’s happening, like the steps of the horse that pulls the hearse up the winding path to the cemetery, like the hearse we walked behind that carried a father (remember) and in the glass of the window of the hearse was the father’s name, written in white carnations, carnations — the father’s name which is your name, the name which was october. october in the fistful of dirt thrown into the fathomless grave. no one was saved. did i love you in an october? i don’t remember. perhaps in one of them, perhaps in none of them. hello old friend, here we are again — how is your sleep, and do you?
october, month of echoes that come from all around like the sound of footsteps in heavy fog.
be good, my mother says, and if you can’t do that, don’t get caught.
don’t get caught. don’t get caught.