chimes

The afternoon spills down wild from the sky, scattering dust and petals. The season pitches and unfurls, caught in e snap and drag of this unruly wind. The rings cast by refraction, the ripples shuttering the water's skin. I cough and sputter, my lungs caught in the persuasive draft. I shrug beneath the green horizon, the mantle of shadows settling slow as the sky just grays and grieves.

Every word's a runaway, every breath an extinguished star. The fertile dust of dreaming scattered in spittle and salt, prayers turned fetid lashed to these masts of flesh. Forget that I know not the days or the reasons for my dreams. Forget that I am only dust and teeth in need of filing. The story arrives from somewhere dressed like someone else. The story is stripped and fitting with our bones and breath and blood. What of names, what of riddles? Today is only always here. You are the only I you know.

The star will strike, whether star or not. The atmosphere will compress and burn, the world will split and shake. We will die or we will tremble, a thousand dire prophecy always just arrived. Someone will read aloud some long dead utterance as if spoken for the first time again. The arrow loosed, the bell tolled, the sign at last revealed. The end will come, and every reason will be equal. The end will come, eternity at last.