Jacob, Lost Angel

         How can I explain this? My blood stirs at the sight of dusk, so unlike the furtive beating my heart gave as I stood during mass. It beats and flows with the moths wings in the street lights beneath the clouded night, and laughs at the dark of no moon.

        I dwell in it for a time as the lights burn out, one by one; latecomers crossing the courtyard are innocent to the desires I foster in this lightless side of day.

         I know them, I know them all and well, yet no one could suspect the lies so accurately as I of my own being. They are worthless, untrained, and do not have so many eyes as tongues.

         If yellow and cold skin were no indication of me, then I was less, and less because I cannot bear strength in these arms. My lips do not speak well, or to them they do not, and no effort would seem conceive a better speech, or part of speech. It does not matter.

         My weak heart should have given out, but I am Lord of myself and all I can see and touch, the touch becomes part of me in the air, the breath of wind in my bones, the blades hidden against my skin are yet a part of me as the shadows I will hide in if I submit to the pull of the dance that has captured my blood, so usually dead that I faint for lack of it.

         Now is the moment. I have withheld myself, my knowledge within my soul till nearly bursting. The moment. A flick of my hand opens the window I stand before. Now is the moment. I quiver with trepidation, to go or to stay, to test this strength I had never before allowed. To go. Now. I reach for it as it reaches for me. To never go back. The blood pounds within my veins, pound, pound, then still.

         Close the window. They will not follow, they will not know how. The world is still awake while it sleeps. Up, not down, they would expect me to go down. Up, to the roof, and down. And then I move to the walkway, no sign, no footprints, no sight, I am no more than a shadow that whispers in a shadowy night.