The boy in the labyrinth holds a torch before him. He cannot see his shadow, which,
behind him swims in a somnambulant glaze. Winds tighten around the boy's body
and his torch so that the universe lowers its eye to this den beneath the earth.
Blossoms of fire flit from crevasses. The boy thinks, to be guided through the
labyrinth is to be guided by bodies filling with light. The universe thinks, there are
the stars. There and there and there.

The boy in the labyrinth feels the ball of twine unspool from his hand. The soft speed
of its spillage as he walks. He measures it; his intimacy with its heft. The knowledge
it erodes as spring water through quartz. Down the passageways, a game of cat's
cradle tugs itself into a bright red web. In the darkest dark, the red twine twists
about the corridors. It breathes the way a heavy sleeper breathes. Soon the boy in
the dark has no string in his hand. To return to his demarcations is to enter a thicket,
to bind oneself to the ligatures of one's own making. The darkest dark takes a deep
breath as the boy's hand feels for that which sleeps beside.

The boy in the labyrinth hears the beast. The pad of the beast's hooves, quiet vowels
sung to a sleeper. The boy listens to keep himself awake. He thinks of spiders on the
edges of their webs, the ballet they dance on their self-made filigree. He thinks of an
azalea sewed into the hem of a dress. The boy thinks, this kind of thinking lead me to
the labyrinth. Its black geodes. Its promises of wild crystal blooms held within.
Morning digresses into night and the beast's song laces its orbit through limestone
causeways. It grows smaller and smaller until imperceptible. The boy soon misses
the song. The beast's idle stroll. The faint breeze to remind that there is anything
there in the widening dark.

The boy in the labyrinth has been following his shadow. He conceives it to be god.
And god said genius is in the eye of its wearer. God said the land before us awaits its
innocents. The boy thinks he will sleep soon and that his shadow's tongue is lined
with velvet. Above the two, stars and the blue heart of the moon threaded with its
meteoric scars. God said this is a maze and your questions are hard. God said there
are miracles and thereare miracles. The boy thinks he will sleep soon and that his
shadow is scrubbing the white from the moon. The boy thinks if he were to lie down,
he and god would see doubles. And in the underlight of bright stars they both know
the world they live in chooses them.