Thee More Shallows - Cloisterphobia
Thee More Shallows
More Deep Cuts (2005)
Skin frozen, damp fingers and wrists grasping at wet-slick branches with mud and leaf decomposing on the soles of our shoes. See ahead dropping below the grass ridge, blue horizon bellying out before an abandoned ship yard with the skeleton dock crumpled inwards on stilted legs, kneeling in the sand before the sea. The blue sand and the blue sea and the black sky blue around the moon with clouds rolling in.
Bats wing erratic shadows in the silhouette of impending storm and ash boughs shudder silver whispers in the wind. We’re attuned to crickets and the whine of mosquitoes by our ears. Up the bank from where we’ve slid down to the coastline, a country road winding between midnight grazing sheep and the wide-eyed look of farm animals after dark. A tent and two sleeping bags smelling like the dirt of our hair and our nails and the unwashed clothes pressed down in the depths of our backpacks. Out there, the two of us standing dark in the mist of evening damp rising from salt water, spray gusting delicate veils over the bluff. You and me shivering in decrepit jeans and woodsmoke sweatshirts. A little further apart than when we left and a little softer still. The crust of determined resolve sprouting from sympathetic intentions. The exhausted ability to fight, an agony of good behaviour. Three years ahead and one year behind. Anxiety that longevity will fail to cure. Some slight anger or a wet-eyed hurt. Laughing hysteric on the highway from here to there. Silent separate sides of the bed but always always my paw in your paw facing oceans at night.