the night of the house fire

by ava marie

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released 12 September 2012

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Track Name: alma
you were born, on a crescent stone. Bereft and blithe, weft and warp. Womb and loom, ash fell upon your cheeks, like static from a street lamp, like snow upon the sea. Oh little darling be brave, for the night has come. Oh my little darling be brave, for i cannot see the shore. There are banks of ice and hollow hills, vast notions where the white birch grows wild and ancient and free. Beyond that there is calm, eclipsed in ink and ribbon-less print. It was there that i stirred, just beneath the surface. And like all things true, lay adrift between shadow and skin.
Track Name: wicker bones
oh my little birch bones, and an oak sewn spine. Or a sparrow sewn in stone and draped in silver, preserved in a ledger bound by dew and ivy vines. A spool of thread and an old rusted thimble, and all that the sea had left behind. So i wove myself a millstone house, with wicker bones and pitch stained sails, and a heart that only beats in 3/4 time. So sing me to sleep, where her ghost spills out as steam. From the heart of an old railroad car. Where our daughter lay beside you, in the moons crescent cradle, and you smiled back at her. And sang go to sleep, go to sleep, and when you wake it will be spring.
Track Name: oh crow oh yule
oh day oh harvest of such certain thorn. Oh crow oh yule oh lenten born. Auger and olive i felt a murmur soft and sound upon my skin. Oh ghost oh shapeless echo asleep in my skin, what has become of you. Oh wilted womb do you still carry her, cause i still cary her. And your bookshelf was burning and the embers lay at your feet. And all that ash made you wonder if it was better off as steam. And your back was bare and your bore burls down your spine, and i waded along its ridges and cavernous colubrine. And i wrapped myself in a worn wool blanket though threadbare were it seams, and i waited for sleeps stippled sails, here at the end of all things. Beneath a bouquet of branch and pine, was a bound cassette, and whirring tape deck, and a voice that softly scribed, oh please do stay, there is no safer place then where the loons song calls home the night, and you dance to the crest and collapse of accordion keys as your mother she smiles so very bright, for beyond her pale eyes, nothing else exists. Besides all that you left behind, the home you cursed then missed. The tape sputtered and spun and ended as it had begun, in an array of light and warmth, and you wept oh you wept for the son sailing west, for you knew he would never again reach the shore, and i dreamt oh i dreamt of a story without an end, where our hair had grown so very long and gray. But you smiled the same, and i knew you in the way you would hum, in the late hours of morning. In the weight of piano keys, and the way you said the words goodbye, i knew you or at least i seemed to, with all your binds and bones burnt in a jar. Do you still carry her? I still carry her.
Track Name: hither
will you stay, will you stay, through the static, static of snow. For the world to grow quiet, we'll wade out into the atlantic, and those promises will remain shapeless as smoke. And tomorrow, i will find my way back to you all alone. We'll walk out to montauk, somewhere we've never gone to, where the winter won't ache inside your bones. Somewhere morning won't bloom, it won't bloom where the sun sinks and settles so far from here. and all those auburn strands of some fleeting eternity stained your eyes, you wept such telling tears. The paralysis of a promise you kept, in glass mason jars by the foot of your bed. A storm the dawn couldn't quell, prayers were written on shells, and swallowed up by the tide. And your charcoal ghost, kept mostly in ink, in dairies and ash, in boxcars spread thin, across stranded shorelines, and sunsets i'll never know, where a woman waits with a lantern and calloused feet from straying to far from home.
Track Name: dark eyes
it will be dusk soon, the moons silver lining hung in the hollows of your cheeks. The night feels so different here, spread so thin so far away the size of a thimble or so. It knows only what the crows leave behind, a tarnished bronze locket from a withered breast pocket lost amongst the moss and vine. And your hands were bound in nuptials knots, not to be undone by time nor the cease of breath. And your gown had torn in rows of thistle and thorn, felt as coarse as the bitter bark, it stained your teeth. And they, they called you something, though the lament of language no longer belonged to you. Nor to the water in your lungs, nor to the last words carved into your palms, nor to the twine wrapped round your wrist. Oh i will never know you now. Dark eyes i will never know you now. I know only the gentle lull of a sentiment-less river. Never stirring to forget, never eclipsed in glass long enough to remember. And i know only the weight of twine, and the temperament of fearful men, and the brush just off the footpath, that the dearest of artifacts so often stray to. And that armageddon sleeps in the softest nests, where the world is often quiet.
Track Name: before the water reached the well
snow slept, so quiet, upon your headstone. The truth felt coarse against my tongue. And i buried you the morning of march 3rd, manic as an infant crying for what was yet to come.
Track Name: the night of the house fire
And its a quite i've kept, a ship preserved in glass. Buried among driftwood and ash, and an antique typewriter missing half of its keys. And your skin scored from stone, it was there that i felt the end, in two waning crows, stitched from golden thread. And from the corner black ink it bled, and from its descent you hewed, and hemmed, stitched, and sung the word dusk. I would not keep the night from your sill.