Lana Bella

Universal Carving

The midnight train departed from Hampton Court
station. He went on murmuring through the signaled
horns. Held between a light-struck hooves of the air
and shadowed carriage. And half-devoured under an
English blasting rain. “It’s quite docile actually for this
time of year, darling”, he said. I’d always known he
liked the soggy cold, for his eyes were stained deep
of teal-slate orbs. I snuck a glance towards the beyond
sky. An infinite dark, peppered with hurrying trees and
spray. At the sheer edge of horizon, the armored jaw of
the wind was lopping off the moon about its neck with a
fine cutlass, draining nearly the ashy gold. While the torrent
swept wide its watery bone, plunging down the metal roof
then gutting through the graveled earth. A liquid violence.
Yet, nothing more than a mutual universal carving. Where
the depths of chaos pillaged outside and soaring notes of
passion caressed within. And never was there a more curious
state than being caved inside an intimate skin of a lover and
that of the cleaving pulses of the rain.

Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than seventy journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Eunoia Review, New Plains Review, The Criterion Journal, The Ignatian Review, The Offbeat Literary, Whirlwind Press and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.