order in the night

 we slept in rows of threes and fives, on a damp forest floor. a wild fire burned in the valley to the east, and the horizon shone of stained glass in an empty church. trees shrugged and huddled in the bus stop of a forest, waiting for news of where tomorrow would take them. shoulders hunched, and the thoughts of newspapers blown astray on a wind that was hot and angry and had nowhere to go. 

It was a night full of sap whistling hot out of the bark of charred wood. 

we slept in our rows under the slate slabs of a sky that was broken and wanted to promise us everything, even though its pockets were full of stars spaced further apart than a single thought could travel; further than love had ever bound even in a teenagers lost days of summer. we were rigid this night, waiting to remember what it was like to be alive.