storm warning

This is how my breath escapes me. This is how the night unfolds. Clouds clot, heat lingers, so much taken as settled when it is only the conflict that plods. The world swept in peals of light and shadow, turning for the ten thousand reasons that do not include you or me. We refract and genuflect, the long yawning continuity of life scurrying against the edge of the razor. These gasps and inspirations as common as carbon, as ordinary as the calling tide and the climbing moon.

Some places boil, some places bake. Some towns drown and some go bone dry. Every course and happenstance without words to call or prophesize. We differ in tongue and prayer, vary in calm and cataclysm. So much confusion between luck and fate, between advantage and dominion. Call down the sky, defile the earth that owns you. Pretend that your stories will ever come close to the truth. Believe what you will, the earth will still tremble and the rain will still fall.

The moment comes and all reason is in remission. The fevers and demons that curdle thought and affect break and dissolve in the wake of each mistake. Awake in another broken body, come to in another nightmare. Passions play havoc, and all the alarms are spent. You can watch the enduring stars. You can try to sleep at night. Foolhardy or as wise as all time, it is your mind committing these crimes of need and fury. It isn't who you are. It isn't what you do. It is the turmoil of every wager being settled at once. It is the prison of our common error, mistaking our wishes for the world.