further still

My aging bones sing in the cold, the stars so bright and far. The lingering shine of evening lives, the icy rain still painting the pavement. My breath rising like the ghosts of old-- like a savior from beneath a stone, like a bottle trapped djinni. Time grows heavier as it learns to move swiftly, bleeding one moment into the next. The lonesome earth seethes with soulful moments, all the more beautiful for their brevity as they pass. Almost worn through, broken in every important way, vision at last exceeds these eyes. This sunken stone making lovely music for idle fishes. This forgotten shadow existing only due to distant shine.

We all receive our portions, nature and nurture, birth and breeding. We begin as beings of staggering brilliance, dense with love and power and all manner of beauty. Slowly we wear our ways into the world, into each fast and feast we earn or are allowed. Some have kin, some have passion, some have the fortunate road. Some have glamor or intelligence, courage or the common touch. We age according to our states and our leanings, wearing the marks of pain and bliss accordingly, of kindness and cruelty our bones are shaped. We lose that factory gleam, through ordinary wear and tear, through acts of god and sham romances.

The frost seizes the gold and the green. Hands crack with each stress and clasp. Heat leaves, as life leaves, as love leaves. The fled energy only looking to balance each portion with every other. Fragments linger, though the night grows cold and bright. Farther still, that froth of life and beauty. Clearer still, for all the distance. Knuckles inflamed, wrists sheared from the joint outwards, that sharp metastasized illness expressed with every breath. The resounding sadness of a soul unsuited for rest, bones grown thick and tired around old vines and fraught barbed wire. The unyielding beauty of this gleaming empty husk of creation.