"prayer", ghost quartet (dave malloy, 2014) | "when i heard the learn'd astronomer (walt whitman, 1865) | "little god", octet (dave malloy, 2019)
[ Begin transcript:
Image 1: A screenshot from the Bandcamp lyrics of "Prayer" from Ghost Quartet. The text is black on a white screen, and styled in all caps. It says, "I WILL TRY TO FORGIVE MYSELF / FOR BEING ABSENT IN PUBLIC / AND BORED BEFORE STARS / FOR NOT REMEMBERING / FOR NOT BEING IN MY BODY / FOR NOT STARTING RIGHT NOW"
Image 2: A screenshot from the Poetry Foundation website, containing the full text of Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer". The text is black on a white screen, and in a serif font. It says, "When I heard the learn'd astronomer, / When the proof, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, / When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, / When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, / How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, / In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, / Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
Image 3: A screenshot from the Genius Lyrics page for "Little God" from Octet. The text is black on a white screen, and says, "We traveled into black holes, into quarks; we slipped through time backwards and sideways; we created new life forms, living suns; we watched the universe multiply, invert, spiral, disappear. We beheld an infinity of wonders---and yet we sat at our desks in stoic calculation, paralyzed by the unforgiving relentlessness of our intellect." The text from "We beheld an infinity of wonders" to "stripped of awe" is highlighted in yellow.
End transcript. ]
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omg you’re WELCOME tumblr.com for the collab of Ridi x Siken I take gifts in the form of german cars or freshly baked pies just an fyi!!! Hmm okay can I pls have either 3 or 5! xx
HELLO BAB! FIRSTLY cant thank you enough for this ask game its wreaked absolute havoc on the dash xx SECONDLY sorry this is so late! i am the slowest of all time xx its kind of long though so there's that!! and THIRDLY: i went with five in the end!! some post-moon angst xx
He’s been in there nearly three hours, now. Sirius has done the dishes, changed the sheets, sorted the cluster of plastic bottles and blister packs and jars of ointment on the bedside table into the precise order in which they’ll be needed. Dug out their Muswell Hillbillies record, since they were talking about it the other day. And Remus is still in the bathroom.
On the other side of the door, all quiet. Miserable bleed of the dripping faucet, but nothing else—no movement, no jostled water. They left the kitchen window open. A draft rocks through the flat.
“Remus?”
He thinks maybe he ought to knock. He doesn’t. The bathroom isn’t thick with heat, as he expected, and Remus doesn’t turn to face him: he’s hunched over in their narrow alcove bathtub, the hair at the nape of his neck slick and sweat-curled, his knees against his chest. The start of a bruise, splayed out over one of his shoulder blades.
“Hi. Hi, you.” Sirius wipes his hands on his jeans, kneels by the bathtub. Remus’ pyjamas, folded in a pile on the lid. “Everything alright? Can I do anything?”
Remus looks at him—or, rather, looks vaguely at his collarbone. He’s bitten his bottom lip bloody, and his eyes are red. Damp, like he’s been crying. When Sirius touches his face, it’s clammy, beneath a sheen of cold water.
“Sorry,” Remus mumbles, "I’m—yes, m’fine.” His voice is chafed, dusty; he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, the dark thorns of his eyelashes. Rasp of raw skin up his forearm that’s yet to scab over. Pinkish tinge to the bathwater. “I’m sorry. Shit, god. Sorry.”
“Oi, no. None of that, Moons. What’s the matter?” Sirius swipes his fingers through the short, sticky hair at Remus’ temple, flicks away a tangle of dirt in it. So much of last night is still raked up against his body, gathered in the soft creases at his arms and thighs.
Leaves rotting on the forest floor. White moon, lodged there in the black like a bullet in an X-Ray, or a tooth through skin. The way the delicate bones at the wrist sound when they snap, like twigs: radius, ulna.
He deserves a gentler night than that. He always does.
“I’m not…m’sorry,” Remus shakes his head, a thinness to his voice that sours Sirius’ insides. “I just don’t—I don’t feel very good, and I wasn’t ready to get out, but I can’t—”
“What is it that’s playing up? Is it your hip again? I can—”
“No, I mean—” Then his shoulders jump, and something catches in his throat; some scraped-up, shuddering noise: “I don’t—feel good, Sirius,” he chokes out, blinking quickly. “I’m just so, so tired, all of the time, and—and it never fucking stops, it’s always so much. It’s so much, every month, and it doesn’t—doesn’t ever end, and sometimes I can’t do it, I can’t.”
Sirius watches the outline of Remus’ ribs, the way they heave. The divots between them that he has traced out so many times. In the corner of the bath, there’s the scummy soap dish that for whatever reason currently only offers a pack of fags: Cadets, white box and red stripe, which neither of them smoke. His jeans, wet at the knees from splashed water.
“I just—I want to feel okay,” Remus breathes, knuckles scratched beneath his eyes. “I don’t feel okay.”
Edging closer to the bathtub, Sirius tries to stamp his voice into something more solid: “Okay—okay, hey, look.” He presses the side of Remus’ head to his chest, kisses his hair and his burning cheek and the bump of bone at the top of his spine—sorry about all that broken skin, sorry there’s only loose change in my pockets, sorry I can’t hide you anywhere.
“Look,” he says after, “we’re alright. We’ll be alright again, you’ll see, Moony. My Moony.” His hand slips down to Remus’ neck; he knows exactly where to feel for his pulse, proof of the desperate kick of his heart. “I love you, and…and I’ll make you feel okay. I will, every single time. You don’t have to do a thing.”
He reaches past him for the washcloth, hanging limp over the faucet. “I’m sorry,” Remus repeats, with a cough. “I—I don’t know why, sometimes.” He pauses. “I’ve made your shirt wet.”
“No you haven't,” Sirius lies, just for the sake of it. “Fuck, though, you must be knackered. I’ll get a takeaway later. Indian, if you like.”
Remus nods. Sirius starts the hot water running again; Remus opens the packet of Cadets, takes five snaps of his fingers to light one. His hands are still jittery. He does this shy, sad smile, as if to say sorry, again.
“You have to know—you’re the very best thing I’ve got, Remus,” Sirius tells him, quietly, fingertips still against his pulse-point. Steady, darling bass beneath his skin. Ash in the water. “The very best thing, so. Sit forward, will you? I’ll wash your back.”
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