SPLINTERS

The frame of this bed is one hundred and fifty years old and we are destroying it. Unspeaking, with our bare feet bedded in the frost, we cleave the icy air with our axes. We bring them down with dour intent as the exertion veils our heads in gauzy blooms of breath. Out of sync we hack at richly-carved posts, panels, beams and struts, toiling in denial of all the births, deaths, couplings and separations they have hosted. Eventually the structure buckles, and we begin to pad back and forth to the far end of the garden, flipping splintered shards of timber onto an ever-increasing cone of destruction. As the match head flares and arcs forward into the imminent bonfire’s belly we know that, finally, it is over.