three morsels

There was an arrival, a leaning. Some flavor of the cusp of something. Some weight lost, a stone in the ocean, a star burning down the sky. A sound like the applause of prayer flags, the answers left to mingle with the wind. It must have made it this far, the lack feels so present. It must have been and gone, the ache is so enriched by the hour.

This is the traveling of my absence. One house, one city, one freeway, then another cycle of meager measures and weakened will. I feel a little sick and so terribly sad. The sadness is only another mark of wakefulness. It is one sort thing to know that it will pass, this sadness. It is entirely another thing to know that it will endure, this sadness, past these more fleeting sensations. The sickness is just the taste of this much failure, dribbled out in time-released doses. The medicine that is swallowed to feel the illness grow.

Type out these three morsels. The rind and the dregs. Music in the background, the dog in the door. It is the transference of vacancies, the substantial lapse and the vagaries of the flesh. I spell it out again and again. I do not know, and will not learn. Three paragraphs chasing one another in circles, making no more sense than me. Here again, between sleeps and failings. Here again, losing my way.