Death of a Nihilist [poetry]

03. saccade

last few frail leaves cling to thread-like branches,

fluttering

like moths

about to take flight.

when mother first told me to sell her arms

her wrists

were as skinny

as the trees' limbs, now.

we sold my sister's

tongue and legs

to get through the first months

of the previous winter.

this year, all that remains

valuable in this hut are:

my half-maimed body,

that could go nowhere,

but a mass-burial pit;

damp, aged pillars,

already shaking and rotting

to its core;

a single iron pan

we cook everything with;

and mother's and sister's straw mats

long emptied

since spring.

autumn's final exhale

holds abated,

cusps on the roiling ocean waves,

lengthens only because she

wants to see how much longer

could stubborn mortality

and reckless reluctance

hold onto.

her ceaseless curiosity unfurls

the same way

winter's sturdy fingers

have already been testing the stone boulders.

excitement

sweeping through the crisp, thin air.

childish keen eagerness

grazed across tree tops and lake surfaces,

cradling the frozen sailors' corpses, left open on shore, to his bosom.

like a father, welcoming his sons home.

strangely, over the dying hearth,

i can already hear

his graceful footsteps, drawing near.

feel his gentle kiss,

his kind blessing,

and his promise

brushing across my sunken cheekbones.

⸻

saccade: the series of small, jerky movements of the eyes when changing focus from one point to another

prompt: limbs