limits

There was a golden sky, blinding in the horizon, shining above the green hills of the coming winter. There was a color so radiant my eyes lost their station, unable to see past this heart-broken hue. The road was subtle and a little sad, despite the press of traffic and the rush of wind. The day dwindled, again so sweet, so far. The lights changed, the other drivers sped on or idled, the freeway left so far behind. My engine coughed, my radio blared, and the flocks all took to the skies. There was something missing, as there is always something missing. That something was mostly me.

I live along that too sharp edge, that too piercing point. I live in the crush and fumble of careless lives, intimate and alien, in a funk and a fury that are all but inexplicable outside my skull. There is a cruel conversion that does not allow me to hold onto the better portions I am allowed, the sadness of a dry-clicked trigger, of the hammer striking the hollow chamber of the missing shell. There is a cumulous of busted culture gathered inside me, spinning fragments all akimbo, making shards of my thoughts and hauntings. Endurance is often bumping up against its limits.

There is beauty abounding. Charms and gimmicks and magic tricks to delight and amuse, shorn remedy for so much poison and error. The heart would break, it is so gorgeous and unlikely. Chances are some little thing you did today would move me to tears. Chances are that there is never enough weeping in this sad and lovely world. Darkness embraced less like love and more like contention. Living is this way sometimes. Some little piece that broke off, a flower or a stone. Some small treasure left for a stranger to discover.