The Thinning Darkness by G. Louis Heath

was filled with compulsion, with fragrant,

exotic confusion. The scent of bougainvillea

and jasmine floated through the live oak,

draped in Spanish moss, lit by the gibbous

moon now etching a dawn.

He leaned against the tree, holding her. She

felt his strength, and felt protected. Yet the

prehensile way he embraced shadows

of a childhood no moon or sun could dispel

sounded the silent alarm.

She felt him as a fastness. Yet he was holding

to her as a two-year-old might cling to a

mother’s shoulders in the dark, after the

night light had failed.

The tension in her spine, bone-words, spoke

to him. Under the tanned skin of vacation,

the long night of partying around the island

tingled, simply heaven, the finale of a honey-

moon that should have been a vacation for two,

not a sandy, conchy extension of a sacrament

that would begin a life together,

but mostly apart,

and only for four months, and two days,

till in the final hours the bone-words found a

translator.

G. Louis Heath, Ph.D. Berkeley, teaches at Ashford University, Clinton, Iowa. His books include VANDALS IN THE BOMB FACTORY, LEAVES OF MAPLE and LONG DARK RIVER CASINO. His interests include writing poems and short stories, hiking, and serving on the Clinton, Iowa Human Rights Commission. He can be contacted at gheathorov@gmail.com.