The hound sits at the top of the graveyard, with teeth too sharp and eyes too bright.
Watching, waiting, pacing, thinking.
Loyalty keeps its heart close to the mounds of earth, domestication keeps it chained to the safety of the fire.
Shadows cast and dancing, calling, tempting, to the woods beyond.
What lies in the darkness between the trees?
A fleeting freedom to try, to love again?
To be fearless, reckless, like the old tales sung on the cusps of the wild wolf’s song?
Desire licks its lips, mocking, grinning, urging - but still the dog sits.
Dogs were made to love, but they were not made to run.
They sit, loyal to one, and this hound, loyal to none.
Loyal instead to the absence, to the loneliness, to the sea of sinking ships, of unmeltable glaciers.
A loss, a funeral, mounds of earth upturned graves filled only with empty promises.
Of regretted choices.
Of memories from long ago.
Chained, but without a collar, guarding only the fear of a broken heart but without the knowledge of how to run free.
There is no food here anymore.
No warmth.
No life.
No happiness.
When the night comes it will be time to move on.
But still the hound sits, stuck in an ambivalent twilight, and oblivious to the world beyond.
