starlight

Somehow the light does not leave when I close my eyes. The glow has nestled there, close to my flesh, caught in refraction or burned into the essence of sight. Sleep strays, and waking is always strange. A few words harbored from some unfettered dream, some absurd certainty that was all but true several breaths ago. Vision is all but broken the moment I switch on the lights, yet seeing seems so clear and right. The explanation left is all stammer and sigh.

I wake on the sofa, a dog curled by my feet, all cramped muscled and bone threaded with ache. The talk from the television squandered what was free of dreaming, words that do not fit the limits of these pictures, stories borrowed from the ether and transplanted into this storm of blood and want. Standing feels like yoga, and in walking each step seems something new.

It is still dark, and the stars ripple through sheets of cold clotted wind. They flicker in the fickle atmospherics, they sparkle in my astigmatic gaze. It is that four in the morning feeling, where the night can not be short enough and still you can not imagine its end. It is that feeling where the awakening is the message, sheltered in a bottle and tossed into the tide. The insistence of sight when all the light is cast at angles, and the flesh only is able to list every failing. The persistent starlight, dancing like candle flames, cast upon the rollicking wind.