contingent

The heat threads its long sharp fingers beneath my flesh, slowly opening all the gates. I plod through the day in a damp daze, my eyes cooking at a low boil, the world all painted on the glass. A day of bellicose air and poor choices, sullen children wanting nothing more than to run wild. A night of long curves and closed lanes and light after violent light. The moon melts away, and the heat has it all.

Now I drowse at these familiar keys, tapping out my nightly grievance, my daily complaint. Bitter and blue, that faint scent of dying somewhere caught as I wander. With the cooker on high, every recipe quickens towards rot. All of my tenders of false affection, all the gathered letters only able to render every slip into oblivion, all the forfeit words long since consumed by some fire. Another sentence ends somewhere between tenses, now and then, now and later. Each translation is a transition, every fall a taste of flight.

Sweat soaked and weary, it all seems desperate measures. These bones groan and creak as the meat clings and pries. All the debts coming due in the bruised and tattered portion of this season. The failed missions, the blown kisses, the prayers and lamentations that have hosted these hollow devotions. I stretch and yelp, I pause and stare, I tap out another set of imbalanced ends. Beneath this swelter and these biting swarms, I place my bets.