worlds turn

Two in the morning and the words won’t do, lying in bed, mapping the stars on the ceiling. All ache and opinion, all blue moods and broken song. Looking for the legend but the scales gone wrong. The wretched flesh and the precious distance intertwined in the unmedicated mind. The wind rises and falls, it slips through where it fits. A bare bulb bears a halo of aluminum and dust. Almost every trace of grace is gone.

Pain is placement. Pain is existence. Bad days and lesser evils, books abandoned unread, friends turning into strangers overnight. The organism no longer up to snuff, heart staggered and hope shook off. Infernal compacts written in the blood and grown from meat and bone build these obligations from hints and ghosts. The untoward ticking counting down until the next set of duties, the sad drag of dawn and these ill sated appetites. Pain the record and the rule.

There is no medicine for the mystery. Worlds turn and stories change and we glitch and start and spew. Comfort is where it is gathered, crumbled on the floor or folded in our arms. A thought spun just so in the right light. Some charm or dream or vapid habit. A box in the closet, a picture in a frame. The song half sung, the one with the words you never quite get right. That wish never spoken, barely even known, there before the dreaming gets started. The breathless unsaid that lets sleep come.