Addie LaRue is not the only dreamer to make a bargain after dark—Leah Atherton

If I told you I remembered the first time we met I would be lying. 

I would tell you I walked into the forest to find the hangman’s tree and 
buried a box of cat bones and grave dirt at the roots, 
that he emerged from the trees antler-crowned and coffee sweet. 

We sinners are all alike in the end, 
and there is a deeper magic to the predawn quiet between 
the students stumbling home and the morning joggers coming out.

The thing about the old gods is that they never make 
promises they can’t keep. 
I have made myself into a promise. 

Last spring he found me by the canal. 
We sat shoulder to shoulder and watched the sun come up 
and turn the railway cranes into crucifixes. He said nothing, 

only emerged from the shadows 
of the old railway yard like the edge of sleep, 
lit a cigarette and watched the clouds play with the rising steam.

Once, I left him a coin at the crossroads and woke 
the next morning blanketed in wisteria and thorns. 

I have stopped asking how he followed me to the city I call home now. 
Even the old gods get lonely on occasion.

These days I could find him anywhere without looking. 
He finds me in airports and graveyards, 
the kind of gentle people once drowned their daughters for.

I leave small things for him in places 
I know the light won’t reach. Tealeaves and miniatures of rum. 
Seashells and fossilized ammonites.

Once, he was in a dive bar pool room in a nowhere town 
where I had run to escape the noise; all cock-sure swagger, 
cold lager and cheap cologne. He put a coin in the jukebox and we danced 

until I could hear the baying of hounds in the bass 
and names blurred to black lacework up his arms.

In exchange for my peace, the poems are everywhere. 
They crowd the lids of pens and spill out of coffee cups. 
I asked for the chaos that would fill empty pages and he kept me.

There have been times I questioned the wisdom of my wish 
and tried to sink myself in the still waters of a calm kind of love. 
I tore up the notebooks and clamped my lips shut. 

In the end we always find our way back to air. 
He never made me ask twice.

I know what it is to carry unuttered 
yearning in the whisky-laced night. 

So tell me your name, dreamer.

Tell me the promises you made 
to yourself and what you’d bargain 
away

Don’t be shy; 
the sun will come up too soon.

photo by Oscar Keys (via unsplash)