Dulcinea

There is a lonely in the bright of the light, a sadness in the relentless sun. The sky falls apart, full of birds and prayers. The wind isn't much help, kicking dust in every eye like the bully in all those Charles Atlas ads. Only there is no muscle strong enough to stiff arm away the brutal breeze. Even the restless heart surrenders to the relentless and the loosed. Even the surrendered heart plods on, life allowing no excuses. Even the secret dream stirs, all salt and selective memory.

Mostly I have forgotten everything, your eyes, your voice, the persuasion of your spine. My rheumy thoughts caught in the cobwebs and the candlelight, kisses and confessions and sudden surrenders. The ply and ache of entanglement, the longing for some story I did not know I loved. You remain the soul of unbidden attraction, the scent and scuff of human rumor. All these half wit passions derive from your river that flooded my origin story. You remain the only super power I ever interred.

It is a life without forethought, all hope lost to some uncharted sea, all likely outcomes all pitiful and bleak. So much of me feeling like a settled bet, with only the payout left to the accounting. So much of me lost like luggage on some disastrous journey, I cannot find you even in my lies. Just these fairy stories left spilling from my lips. Just these simulacra of kisses that arise like blood and tears from the statuary. The sadness of another sunny day, the providence of your memory skintight and as merciless as the hungry wind.