Featherweight Love

Chapter 2: The Dreams

 "Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore."

              - Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven.

I'm in the field, the one next to our house. The ground is lit from above by an unseen Sun, but the sky is ink-black. The wind is so cold here, brutalist gusts and misanthropic whispers. It pricks my skin, ice-white skin, like clumsy chisels of fine china plates; I stand and wait for the cracks to appear.

With me in the twilight field is an old woman, hunched over, wielding a large metal tool. I watch in silence as she lurches around, taking sharp, forceful swings at the grass. After every 3-4 swings, she rises, her back extending, breathes and then continues. I do not intend to get closer, but my feet walk towards her anyway, taking laboured strides as they do so. Swing swing swing. Rest. Repeat. As I near the lonely woman, she turns to me. Her face isn't menacing or wild, or distinguishable - just a face. Compelled by the wind, she holds out her tool, a sickle, and my hand reaches out to touch it. In the instant that my palm makes contact with the blade, its rots, and ossifies into a mess of brown, ferrous gunk. But the woman isn't angry, she merely rises from her crouch, picks up the remnants of her sickle and walks off into the tall grass. Then she's gone.

Flashing past me: Rain, battering the ground, picking up the dirt and throwing it against the floor; holes in iron fences, joints weakening; petals, oranged and murky, crisp. 

I awake, panting, drowning in sheets and sweat-sodden fabric.