The Place

The place is like a blessing, like rain, awaiting no more acknowledgement than a goat bleating, or a wife waving him goodbye as he takes his dark body out onto the moor. Come with me now, to Lamper Knott. We will climb the stake road, past the high white stones through a storm of memories. And it will be like snow falling like snow. When the raging winds tear the clouds into flakes. Grief lodges its stone in his throat. He flicks through his memories as though he were watching a film of dust. It is soft and slow past Stonethwaite Fell, along the thick side of the valley, away from the sea. A blizzard is wandering the fields, and he looks up and asks himself: 'Why do you want this?' Light pierces the cloud and his soul bursts into the open, a brief flash of diamond. The waterfall is just beside him, mineral sweet. He has forsaken the marital quarter of his life, to experience something else, something fallow, cold and sweet.
The sky is blunt and soft when he stumbles upon her, stone coloured now, with snow drifting into her nose and ears and defacing her dead body. Her eyes, perfectly round, see nothing, see it wide.
He folds himself into a perfect half and lies down by the dead girl, awaiting no more acknowledgement than the rain, than a blessing in this place.