myth for branched asphodel

What is the heat around the candle you hold so firmly?

What is the sound that comes through the air?

We pricked our ears in the darkness and felt a wind that wasn’t there. The mountains were shadows against the sky.

The flowers swept the satin dusk.

That was when we felt a presence. It might have only been the dim recollection of our deaths, standing, as it always had, we realized, by our sides.

When the time comes will we find ourselves in a place like this? On a plain so vast and full of flowers? I will see you but you will be one hundred miles away - maybe more.

In that moment we could run to each other but the woody stalks would break our flesh and leave these flowers lined with blood. We could walk and eat nothing but roots but the flowers would keep growing as we walked and become clouds so we would become lost.

We could call to one another forever, but the flowers would want to tell their stories too and our words would be garbled.

On this plain, so far from one another we may have the thought to close our eyes and remember that we lived every day. And we will remember in the fields that we loved each other differently in each one, and one hundred miles is only a distance in the same way every day was a circle.

Like the hunters in our bones and the menders in our hearts we will take another step in the endless field of asphodel.