Beyond the Heart

Meditation on Ruin

By Krysia Wazny McClain

A man and woman hike deeper into the woods. Sun burns their lips and bleaches fog
from the faces of the ghosts. Their path to Manderley follows the rise of a crimson flood,
a tide staining the trunks of evergreens, stripping branches bare of needles. Coaxed
by the terrain, the couple consume a cascade of sound, low and
lower still, approaching a waterfall, no—an opera
pouring from Bluebeard’s mouth—Yoouu
                                                                          diiiith.
                                                                              Judith—final conquest. The rumble of Goliath’s
body as it hits the ground. They come to ten emptied thresholds. Inside the ruin, no shelter, no
plate of ripened fruit. They undress in the air, and she opens her flesh to fingers of
scorched stone. In the passageways, a shriek, a laugh, a banshee’s echoed cry. She will sleep here like a child, newborn. He dreams of fire.