Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks January 2015: Ourobouros | Page 14

October
Anna Victoria Lynch // Áine-Buaidheach Ní Loinsigh

T

he metal framed doubel-bed was squeezed into the tiny whitewashed bedroom,
with barely a foot to spare around the edges. The blinds, tilted at an angle,
deflected the glow of the city streetlamps from outside into the room in garish orange
streaks, which broke against the wall shadowed in blue by the night sky; there was no
other light in the room as they lay there in silence, his arms wrapped around her as
she gazed into his eyes. There in that bedroom cell, separated from the hectic world
outside by nothing but a single pane of glass, all that mattered was him.
The silence was broken occasionally only by a sigh, or by the washing of a car tyre
against the rain soaked road as it drove past the apartment block. They had not shared
words for some time in the fear of compromising such a precious moment; those
moments were too few and far between.
She gently brushed his face with her fingertips, running them across his cheekbone
and into his hair, where she twirled a thick dark lock ‘round her finger; he smiled softly.
Their eyes were locked onto each other, each throwing the doors to their innermost
cores to one another.
‘I know we have had our trials,’ she admitted in a whisper, ‘but I don’t want you to
feel that we will suffer more than we celebrate together.’ He nodded apathetically; she
continued: ‘I have a feeling that good things are coming our way if we just hold on
for a little while longer.
His only response was a wry smile as his eyes scanned her face: she was so beautiful,
his idea of perfection on the surface, but deep beneath the skin there was a solemn
truth. They had entered into their Winter, where more days were spent walking in
darkness than in light, and even in the light no warmth could be found. Of course,
winter is part of the natural way of things, but without a Summer it hardens the heart
until one day, you do not remember what warmth feels like. But even in this deep dark
Winter, for every hour of darkness, bleakness, and despair, there was a beautiful
fleeting second of warmth, light and hope, like a gentle southern breeze sweeping the
clouds away just for that moment. Were these mere moments enough to endure the
never ending tide of night? Her face, like a thin veneer of snow where children play
careless of the havoc the colder months bring, stared at him in ignorant need.
‘I love you,’ she said, ‘and I don’t ever want to leave your side.’
He enveloped her in his arms, pulling her deep into his embrace, and sighed. She
clung onto him in a desperately tender grasp, wishing they could lie in each others’
arms forever, but he clung only to a distant memory of real love. There was once a
time when he longed for nights like this, inside away from the cold, warmed by the
bosom of the woman he held dear, and even though he still did it was a different kind
of longing, where in living in the past he was sacrificing his present. As the hope of
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