The Flea Hunter (All roads lead to Lybissa) *revis

So now the sky stays salmon. Flesh then skin then pupil. Fresh on the salt morning breeze comes nothing. The day’s catch will trickle by my window any minute to the cry of jealous seabirds while where I decide and try to sleep is flying thick with fleas. The breakers sigh all day beneath a din of clicking parasites. When we broke them by the lake the water rusted and set solid as a plaque to something like death or victory or the battle for breath and it emptied the sky of reflection. But now and yet it’s said they see a threat in the mountains still. A weary phantom justice howling down the snowline. Between the thumb nails and it’s all over. They burst full of something else’s blood but catching and keeping them still’s an art so scratching continues apace. The street outside is growing unsafe. They want the very worst for me or need. So much to sate the spleen of swindled souls in thrall that the waters clot and oaths are sworn on swaddling cloth. We were never that hungry. Reporting for orders Your Smallnesses. Some sting but most just leave an egg of the itch I find upon this relative behemoth stalking sleep time. All the city’s daughters wore their rictus mute and pretty for fear. That foe at least I figured done away with but invertebrates hide in plain sight it seems. In their reckoning of the night my star’s a dog one. Red and mean may it burn. For vox populi vox dei say they and I tremble. Those hoof beats are near. NB. The title gives a clue as to the historical inspiration.