threshold

The day holds its breath and plunges head-first underwater, or so the light seems to say. Dusk whirling all around, sudden gray mingling with uncertain blue, everything awash in this drowned palette, everything sunken beneath the tide. Eyes flail the street, sifting the wind, looking for some glint or glimmer. Darkness falls, leaving everyone looking for the light.

The body makes its business known, ache and pang, hunger and drive. It has its issues, it has its say. All day long it makes its case, all night it makes its claims. The bones bend and cry, organs seethe and growl, the flesh creeps through each hour. Lists and listlessness, being always the hardest of verbs. Wanting and lacking always the same flag unfurling in separate ways.

Things might never get better, but they can always get worse. Gentle night vies to remind, a hint here, a terror there. Something moving just out of sight, a whispered name rising from an empty room. We break, we bleed, we hunker down, we endure. We fail and fall, and sometimes we fly. We reach our threshold, and find ourselves further down the road. We find the boundaries, and cross the border. Always a little farther, feeling our way through the dark.