vessel

The sun sets soon, if it hasn’t already. A rectangle of sunlight claims a patch of the neighbor’s rooftop, a thousand word parcel in the picture puzzle of transience as the rain dark skies close ranks, the sharpened cold holding my lapels tight in its fists. The neighbor’s roof already one shade again nearly as soon as it’s noticed, the moment always missing before the words work it out, all the feelings ending up hard as the marker moves along. It rained today, it will rain tomorrow. The weather washing cars and filling buckets. The weather effortless with the last word.

It’s the same old outlook looking out, the translation caught with its hand in the till. Sensation so fissile in the afterglow, the bandwidth burnt with spark and ricochet, sentience the residue spent as heat. We cling to the paths we plod, trodding on shifting stones and feets that can’t but fail, doubling down on bad bets pride begets. Felling ourselves with cheap shots and cognitive dissonance, having fallen in with the cult of hallucination, the narrative fickle to style and the particulars. It’s the wisdom granted of tricks and beatings, the strength of bones clad by blows, bum luck and an aptitude for taking a fall. The mystery receives us in our boundless limits, silent as we miss the mark.

The night is here, full of every fact and myth that fits. Out on the porch with a light bright in the corner of my right eye, facing east and the cold street, a date a time the ache of cold fingers. The night both word and world, a vessel suited for any reader’s alchemy, ready for any blessings or baggage. This old hat lived in hurt shuffled from day to day and page to page, the magic somehow always short a rabbit or two, I report dutifully to my station. I unwrap the empty, again the absent offering the vessel.