shiny

The moon is chrome and halogen, burning so bright that it nearly washes away the gathered shadows longing for midnight. The pavement is cold, the color of dirty snow, of tainted salt, of weathered bone. The night looms in the sway of leaves, in the spattering of stars, in that sound of footsteps never quite placed. The night waits at a distance, aloof and as useless as any quiet witness. The moon tugs at numb blood, at battered dreams, at a will so chilled it may as well be buried. Another dead pet for the stoney soil, another unmarked grief.

It is the creep of hateful strangers, the glacial speed of humors meant to be on the mend. It is the ache of absent tattoos, the gray breath of unspoken words, and unresolved woundings. It is the cracked flesh of little used hands, the feeling of sharp buried inside the joints, the feeling of burning arising from the cold skin. It is that sickly shining moon, like a searchlight hunting convicts from some conspiracy helicopter, seeping through the trees. All the sad songs so far above this. All the blue moods so soaring and breathlessly better.

A beauty so clear and kind it can only hurt abounds. The blissful miracles that surround, the lucky call and the stolen kiss, are too sharp and real to feel past this pain. The glowing smiles, the sympathetic words, the gentle attempted touch-- a world of rot and ruin. The feast is in ashes, all the bridges bright with fire. The ache of every hour, the call of sharpened steel. Another sleepless night. There is no escape.