absence sings

It is the skin's own addiction, that last hour leaving dust on the walls. It is the very moment, sliding through your fingers. Something shuffling just out of view, a sound like dead leaf walking. Something breathing in the dark, a feel like a dream waiting just around the corner, longing to go bad. Time is a notion attached to the changes in the things around us, an ablution granted in waves and miniatures. Will is an whim attached to the changes we pretend towards in our selves. The touch lingers, absence sings.

This is the story of the window before it was a window. This is the story of the glass before it was sand. The slow river, the glazed gaze of emptiness. The wish before the ache occurs, the breath before it snuffs the candle's flame. Something is always starting while memories swarm and roost. Something is always out there, if only the strain of language leaning in. The night seeps in through every emptiness. Whether thought or apparition, the night floods on through.

The clockwork remains only grammar, the glamour of the philosophized consumed by the way of the world. Sweet words, harsh tongues, simple whispers and casual flayings. The matter gathered in books and in beings. Ten thousand ghosts all talking at the same time, and the stillness clatters against the walls. This pause, this gap, this stretch-- cages and castles, kindness and crime. The fingers tremble in the naked air, never seeming to fit. That touch long gone, haunting these measures of bare flesh.