The Town Square (a Prose Sestina)

Listen. There was heat in the town tonight. They were all there, clustered around the fountain in the town square. Suddenly, violence erupted. Scars were inflicted upon tattooed arms. Nobody slept. Blood dyed the water.
But the water is stagnant tonight. After the bloodshed, I slept throughout the afternoon and dreamt of square metal arms crushing me. And as I awoke, my skin was pocked, where the rust from my dreams had erupted.
It erupted through me like river water gushing after a week of rain. It was like a call to arms. But tonight, I can square my conscience with my behaviour. It is not my fault I slept.
I slept again, I admit it. Sleep erupted through me. My dreams this time were of raindrops wind-carved to be square and sharp and brutal, and I awoke to the dripping of water into my mouth through the hedge leaves. Tonight, I wish that I were in your arms.
But I know that your arms caressed some other as you slept the two-backed mountain sleep that had the lick and taste of tomorrow as well as tonight after you had erupted into each other's arms, like two flows of water meeting, recoiling and bending back together further up the valley to form the sides of a square.
So listen. Your tattooed square-bashing victim of that other call to arms is gone to do his duty. Water under the bridge. And yet you will have slept like a cream-mouthed cat, oblivious, as my jealousy erupted privately throughout the whole time that the clouds scratched the moon tonight.
And now I am back in the square where no one slept. Now I am back where the water is again as red as when your hatred towards me erupted. But I still wish that I were in your arms tonight.

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