tenderness

There is no consolation in the color of her eyes, stained with moonlight, staring at the dark. There is no comfort in kisses whittled from spare letters, that postcard alphabet offering, that false prophecy. There are the hours that come and go unbidden, the ethereal passions and the heavy clock. There are all the lingering gods and their dirty symbols, pressed like coins on cadaver's eyes, ink into the remainders of life and limb. There is the world of ache, the work of lost children and stale rumors. These words, always so clearly missing their mark.

It is a life without the lightness or crucible of romance, no lovers and still rooms. The small sounds of sleeping beasts, and the rackets of strays and addiction. The tree limbs sway, waving to something so far away it might not exist-- another kind of starlight, a letter in a bottle in the midnight of the sea. The ground is dry and hard, slow to forgive the least trespass. Smoke and oil and grit in every limb. I would reach, if I hadn't already reached too much. I would long, but I have been longing long enough.

I am cast in brick and glass, sodden thoughts, and a glamor of lust and abandon. Pale scars and dappled flesh, hands that only know their own folds and too much of their strength. The pain of this, the ache of that, the flippant repartee of these middling years. The tender heart moved to melancholy, though it seeps more gristle than blood. The tired mind turns toward the next vacant labor, the next gruesome task. A few more words left as ransom. A few more words, then another night alive.