hours after

Long ago I let my mind wander, and it hasn’t been heard from since. All that’s left are reels and furies, lucid lusts and ubiquitous sorrows. The forms to fit the rattling in. The pitch inward, the dead sea of dreams, those furtive words upon the edge of sleep. The language let loose in this animal skull. Turns of phrase and taken fancies, the rhythm and the breath. Backlit by ancestral fires the shadows pitch and loom. The place where the words let go, and the senses give way.

And so these minutes against the deadline I set inside my head, thoughts all but gone, and the words on their way. The blood bunches up and cuts loose, the bellows takes the air. I sieve and seethe, flutter and furl, missing the me of things. Lonesome toasts and abandoned appetites. The virtuosity of the labile engine. The mystery unbothered, I drone on and on.

There are stories that no longer fit. There are stories that I never wore. There are tales told, and details abandoned, and books no one else has read. I hold so still that for long stretches I cease to exist. I hold so still that doors offer up their opening, and all the locks forget to work. I write against the clock, the countdown my only context. I write these placid epitaphs and love letters that read like death threats, always up hours after I drift off.