fortune

The sand glitters in the run off from the gutters, bright and vivid crystals hinting at constellations drowning beneath the sea. Stones forged in fire, ground down to dust and sparkle by the restless rolling of the tide. Our heads are full of patterns, the sieve of sensation and the forge of habit pressing our echoes out into the world. All the sign still whispers, all the traces still call. The streets telling fortunes, littered with days of waste.

The trees fill and sway, leaning green above the curbside. The busy dusk is full of flocks and whipped by the wind. An egret feeds, still and solemn in repast, lingering in the tall reeds and waste water. A shopping cart sinks slowly, a shipwrecked husk discarded in the ditch. The call of tomorrow aggregates in these gray leavings. Every prophecy written in trials and trash.

Wound down the heart skips and stumbles. As the day dissolves what proof is left? Scuffed shoes and snoring dogs and lesions in the skin? Sad eyes and blown kisses and letters never sent? Only these false constellations and fallen stars. Only the reprints and the prestige, the tribute and the reveal. That lapsed magic of resurrection, the belief that tomorrow's roots burrow through today. The stories we tell telling all the story we will ever know. That lotus blooming from the murky depths.