paint

First you trouble the rushes, first you bend the reeds, then you leave this world with painted wings. Then you rise into the seeping blue sky and fly away. We chase you our thoughts and wishes, we nettle you with our names and words. It seems that you are always just around the corner. It seems as if you are always almost home.

Ink and stitching, wind and sky. None of this seems probable. Here gravel and thistle, here asphalt and paint. The road gives out, though it unwinds forever. The stars are lost, though they flirt with the eternal. Blood seeps and eyes water, scratched and torn from all this missing. We weep and ail, mortal coil and earnest portion. We reach and reach, never touching long enough to hold.

You come to us in fever colors, you come to us along the lonesome borders of dreams. You were there before knowing, you were there before the dawn. Bare flesh beneath a naked sky, old wounds that never heal, the scars where eyes once were. The wires bundle and tangle, the least current chattering like teeth, the power left on though the house is long since empty. There is a promise to you, never spoken aloud. There is a promise to you that you never said you'd keep. You leave to follow whatever fortunes call you. We are left believing there must be something left to see.