{ in that iron ground } gryphon + para

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

P A R A C E L S U S

She used to.
She used to. She used to,
and

maybe I’m stuck in retrograde. Roots grow gardens between two ribs, blooming scars –
t e a r i n g through a diaphragm discoloured black and blue to bruise in thoracic hollows. The memory of her fingers still trace ruins where they’ve lingered and pressed into the soil,
leaving weeds to bleed in her wreckage, her decay. I pull back clothing, skin, a cage of bones. Sepals, loam layers. And there lies an aseptic heart,
translucent and quaking.

Some mornings,
cicatrices wind towards an underbelly of aches. Searching in
a place too soft and untouchable for a pain that only grows worse by daylight. I'll show the sun my spine, move carefully, bend gently, and hope nothing breaks underneath the pressure of regressive motions,
remembering our nights over and over again –
until my throat tastes raw. Rusting. Wounded, like white copper.

Ripred, it hurts.

Vi would always tell me to count in graveyards, biting down on fists. The salt of blood stained teeth as I breathed in numbers.

(One, two, three)
We would wait for my hands to stop shaking.

But us,
scratching at sin,
so simply –
there's always dirt underneath my fingernails. A layer of night clinging to skin. No matter how I wash my hands, dactylograms read body counts, blisters mark tallies,
and I wish I could be brave like Vi or at least fucking crazy like Ripley, or be like anyone but us. And I wish I wasn’t afraid of peeling off band aids from my palms, afraid of finding scars stitched with forests breathing beneath the medical tape. Her weeds growing pando systems symbiotic to heartbeats.

If I could be stronger.

I wish.

"Fifty to twenty-five, Paracelsus. I'll your debt even.”

But strength, cut off at the knees,
he raised the knife and
– I just wanted to live.

Ornate wickedness in the slope of a smile sprouted venule vines in his eyes. Branches sloping bones. Hands and feet tugged in a surrender to hell, I bowed and he told me “Hey Para,

we’re
going
to
fuck
with
the
house
of
hades,

tonight.” He lit a fire amidst the bramble. Cauterized limbs, the smell of burning led wolves out. The light brought the moths. And the ashes,
left at our feet.
We pick through the pyre, polluted.

All cemeteries look the same,
at mourning, at night, exhumed. With flowers guarding this grave, the tombstone stands in the plastic sheen of moonlit apparitions. It’s supposed to be absolute. It looks untouchable. It must be holy.

We must be cursed by now.

Ripley unrolls the plastic canvas and lays it neatly before us. It rustles when she smoothes it out. She pulls on the surgical mask, snaps on the elastics.

I guess we’re used to it.

Steel spades cut breath as we trample over toes. Over bodies stirring to the rush of our movement, dirt hitting tarp in rhythmic whisper. The air smells damp. Of spring.
Of death. Of earthly vices and damnable crimes. And our organ moves motorized, a mass making holes in this air, this soil. This night, endlessly. Choking on the bitterness unearthed beneath balsam deceit – fingers gasp, opening to breathe. The shovel slacks in my hold, blood quickening before it falls.

All cemeteries are the same.
We just want to live.

I exhale. I dig.

I NEED A FOREST FIRE