sentiment

It is there in this reaching, hands held out, palms up, cupped together as a begging bowl. The reflected ache of the gesture, the call to prayer and the yard rife with ghosts. The stars rippling in the wind, branches scraping at the sky. The smell of smoke and sweat, the litany of entreaties. It arrives in this wash of memories and mistakes, eyes looking skyward, towards every slip of distance. Nothing is left but the weeping.

The brickwork is marked with the charcoal streaks of snubbed out cigarettes, small remainders of this vast habitation. These wildernesses strewn with our habits and our discards. Centurion graffito and gang sign, flecks of stone tapped from arrowheads, strings of videos and piles of unread books. The signs are everywhere, once everything is gone. Eternity is only the art of what isn't, the grave yard architecture and the impressions left in cement and lava beds. We see it all, and are moved by our absence.

We stack the chairs and we sweep the floors. The remembered mop bucket spitting steam into the night. Cleaning products and reflections left in the midnight glass. The weight of headlights stretching up the drive, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the phone ringing late into the night. Greeting cards and shot-glasses, notebooks stamped by coffee cups. We work away, moving backwards from beginnings, until we can see nothing but our own passage. A place marked by pacings and prayers left unanswered. Sandcastles built to dissolve in the inevitable tide.