any dying fire

Somehow I missed the rain. It barely fell at all, just a sheen of glisten, just the breath gray upon the mirror. I watched the sky for the first signs of the conspiracy, saw the creep and draw of the weather. I watched the dawn light blue and gold in a strip of sky held tight by drifting clouds. I waited for the rain, as still as any dying fire. I fell into a furrow of sleep, and I missed the drizzling mist as it touched down.

The heart has its reasons, its lapses and its truths. The heart will seethe and want and draw down deep the silvery smoke of romance. The heart can not count all its wounds and scars.

Days pass by, and I do not say one thing that matters. The wheels all turn, the stars will shift, and I don't say a thing that is true. My hands too dry and empty, my bones sing of complaints of a forsworn grave. I lost my way long ago, in some fever chill or sweltering bed. Lost amid the drift of letters and the plain honest wonder of the world, I allowed each stranger their myths and stories. I allowed myself the way of the broken vessel, the tao of the burning bridge. All weeping wounds and the light that leaves the ash.

Outside the day is bright, a vivid blue unfit for the season. No leaf turns, no branch sways. Chalk marks on the pavement, graffiti marring every other fence. An open sky and the sound of motorcycles in the distance. A feeling settles in, like that of every dream lost too soon. An embrace broken while the body still longs for enclosure, a kiss swept aside like a startled bird, rising where flight is not a gift but a curse. A depth of longing that lingers without a single thing to want in sight.