It's a gleaning of sorts, picking up all the spare seeds and broken stems. Tying them together. But, instead of a sheaf, I build a straw man, a ghost to hang in front of crows.

There's no darkness darker than the inside of an empty barn in the Valley of the Shadow. Only dust remains, settling into my eyes until they're dry and hard as millet seeds. Even blindness is brighter. A blind man's hands can see. They're not straw, bound together by thin ropes, shivering at the slightest breeze.

When there's nothing left to harvest, the harvesting is easy. A razor blade sliding once... twice; to make the body mirror the soul.

There's a Voice in the Valley, but I don't know if I want to listen. There are hands in the mountains, but I must stop the wind... or my hands shaking.

Originally publised in Time of Singing.