bad habits and small rooms

Night clings to the walkways and the windows, headlights sweep the streets. The odd wandering excitement of children sounds sharp and high above the lit-up houses and the ragged yards. The trees settle into their evening breathing even as each leaf is leaving. The moon waxes on and on.

I stand near the quiet thudding of moths on the wrong mission, these fierce collisions of will and wing beating out their absent brains and dusty scales. My eyes are dull and always hungry. I watch the street, I watch the sky. I watch the slow burn of my ill temper paint everything I see. I mouth thorny expletives as if they were prayers. I am useless and unmoved.

My flesh is burned and my limbs are electric, feeling every bit like ending every fight. My beard is a grizzled tangle, itching away at my slab of a face. I can not help but think in blades and clubs, in bones and arteries and wicked needs. Every third person I see seems owed a thorough beating. And so again, I retreat to small rooms and bad habits. And so again, a day open to the world makes a hermit of me before the sun is snuffed.