Blood Moon Scrub - Through the eyes of the Lost Soldier
Through the eyes of the Lost Soldier The sky is bleeding into the dirt again, and the old hunger crawls up through my boots. It no longer matters. Time does not march out here. It pools beneath a dry creek bed, stagnant and unseen. But when the moon swells, heavy and bruised with copper rust, the cold in my ribs becomes a scald. The scrub does not burn with heat. It burns with memory. Through the tangled mallee, I see the flash of artillery, the orange-red roar of a barrage that never stopped falling, trapped forever inside the rib cages of these dead gums. I taste copper on my tongue, sharp as rifle oil and dried blood. The black heavens press down, bending the whole world inward until I am trapped inside a glass bead of fire. I pace the boundary where red light cuts into deep shadow, waiting for a relief column that lost its heading eighty years ago. Everything here is parched. I am so thirsty. But I do not want water. I want your nourishment. I want your dawn, your warm pulse, as yo...