KINGSLAY

If he saw her now she would like smoke.

He would see how she is dissolving before him, how weightless she has become. He could breathe her into his lungs like ash if he wanted, and never breathe her out. He could let her settle into the tissue until they both became parts of the same animal. If he saw her now, she would look like the surface of a dying lake. He would see the cracks and fissures splitting the flesh along her body. He would feel the grains of her caught through the lengths of his dark eyelashes and scratching at the surface of his eyes like the sand on the day she left him for the haze and the horizon.

If he saw her he could stop her, but he doesn’t.
He isn’t made for this.

If he saw her now she would look like a sunset.

“Go, Kingslay,” she says, and if he saw her he would see the blue settling in around the words instead of feeling a prickle that rolls through his flesh and into his bones. “You should go,” she says, and he would see the darkness erasing the colour of light instead of feeling the jolt of anxious muscle pull through his legs. Instead, he sees the rustle in the hazel branches. Instead, he doesn’t feel her falling through the cracks and the spaces between his fingers. He doesn’t see the tears rolling rivulets down her cheeks, and even if he had they could never mean for him what they’ll mean for her.

He doesn’t feel the weight of her glance.

He doesn’t feel, but if he did, would they be different? Would it change this? If he was different would they still stand here, flesh-to-flesh? Or does she only learn to love the wild things? Maybe she only loves the things she cannot hold in her hands – constellations, smoke, fire.

“I will think of you,” she says, and if he saw her now she would look like an ending.

“I do not expect you to think of me,” she says, and the shudder runs through his body and he sways on his legs. He still does not meet her eyes. He still cannot comprehend a world beyond the branches of that hazel tree.

He says, “No.”
Because he will think of her still, but not here, or now.

Now, he lets his legs pull him forward and leaves her in the spit of dirt he kicks up in his wake as he jolts toward the hazel tree.

And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.