Dying in Drama— And Drama—is never dead

[Philomena]

43rd Day of Winter, 512
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The strange lingering place, it comes, it comes, the strange, and lingering place, th eplace of just-slept-not-yet-sleep, where the body drifts, unmoored,unmoored, the anchor raised, adrift, adrift, along the slithering seas of dream thread, down and down, against the older rattling paths, to take, to take, no... no... no not there, not tonight, the old, the old, the old and well known grooves of the path instead, the catch and claw and drag the wheels into them, turn, and turn, and turn, you cannot turn, the grooves are deep, too deep, too deep, and the auld and ancient rite, the dreamer's baptism, to wake, to wake, in a place unimpeded by flesh.

In a place.

White, gleaming white, all around, all around, the light is cold, the trundled bundled cotton cloth is warm on the tiny child's skin, so warm. Warm... warm... warm and sweet, warm... warm... warm and sweet, the pulsing, suckling rhythm of the child's comfort. But a tautness.

Tautness, tautness round the ankles, dragging upwards, upwards, the light is cold upon the little child, her skin bare, her flesh spare, and she is drawn up, and the blanket lost, and the crying heart, it is left in the blanket, only the frightened heart drawn up to shiver underneath the quivering flesh, spare, skin, bare, and the bite of hemp about the ankles.

Suspended, downward, the aching bit of blood trapped in the vessels of the neck, the temple, the eyes that pulse with unremitted blood.

IT is white here, like the inside of a cave of shining light, shining, cold, light, like fever mornings in winter, like the watch-lantern in the dead of night.

And the walls, the shivering walls billow, shrinking back, and bakc, and back, constricting, constricting, drawing in, to wrap her up, within, to deny the entry of the invader, drawing, constricting, drawing, constricting.

And on the ceiling, one red drop, a ruby drop the plops against the gauze cloth walls, and soaks, incarnidine, drawing down the gauzy threads, in slow, streaming lines, the hungry walls drinking deep of red, red, red, red like maple trees, red like an angry sun, red like bood, like her own sweet, failing blood.