countdown

The world is gone, the world returns. What happened in between, the world only knows. Anything might be true-- even the lists of impossibilities. Even the litany of lies. The facts will hold onto the traces, the devil with the details. I miss out on most of it. No-one tells me anything.

The shelves should give it away. The emptied pockets, the savored books, the notes that led to nothing right. The bar ware rimmed with dust, the fresh bottles, the coffee cups. Something settled in the initial ideas, the placement of the key volumes. The creased spines, the dictionaries, the field guide. Because I knew I was always looking. Because something was always going to be outside my grasp. There are clues, there are questions. Answers are always found in the asking.

The words are the residue, they are the remnants of the ritual. They are there when everything is lost to me. They are there when even all the words are gone. The blank page, the plastic alphabet. Something in between the absence and the ending. Something in between the search and the discovered. I go to sleep laden with questions. I awake and all the asking is gone. A brand new world, another country. From meaning to matter, counting backwards. The numbers get smaller. The countdown drawls on.