The Darkly Golden Room

The Darkly Golden Room

 

W.B. Preston

Stretching to cover the canopy of a dream with a paint filled with the stars of eternity,

the wind spins atop the wheel twirling the clouds across this imagined ceiling.

Wide asleep I lay,

as she whispers tales of the silver skies filled with purple burrowing moles amongst the dirt in the

sky.

And the buckets of rain the hand maidens emptied to try to fill the holes made by the moles.

Recounting the myths now to you, I cry, though at the time I lay still and silent, for her words billow

softly in the golden shimmer of the night.

The ground is so far away from our feet while we paint, no star the same as the last.

We cover the holes the maidens could not, though the moles were nowhere to be seen.

And then she was gone, and I painted alone, but for the light of the stars,

twinkling shimmering pale blue, the clink of celebratory champagne glasses cheered

from across the galaxy awoke me from my bed of light and sand.

The pebbles fell from the side of the bed as I stood

I nearly slipped on the pinpoint grains of light.

Slipping on my cotton candy house shoes I tip toe not to disturb the giant mole sleeping at the foot of

the bed.

 His grand snores shake the room, but the stars do not budge, like chandeliers,

whose light is impossible but whose attachment is unmatched.

She returns, the woman whispering dreams, but now she screams and the mole jumps awake

burrowing into the floor and pulling the ground into his hole.

I grasp for the lamp and it explodes into glowing floating sand, as does the rest of the darkly golden

room,

whose pebbles spin down the moles hole,

downward we twirl, spinning in a whirlwind of glimmering dust and darkness.

She whispers to me, as the orange and purple glow inches over the edge of the dark sphere,

and my freshly painted ceiling falls from sight,

in the wake of a roar, and the blinding light.