one tongue

It is always a little lighter than I would like it-- my eyes never were what they used to be. I am always writing something, filling in the shadows, hedging in the gaps. Light seeps in to flesh and glass, light spills and presses and refracts. We are bound by these excesses, resonant and far too real. We are known by our obstructions, carved out in slabs of dense secrets, dowsing a little glow with every reach. Casters of shadows, keepers of smoke.

It is always a little later than the last time-- my mind is always losing track. Some breath, some spell, some whisper thistling across the globe. You can write it on your bare skin, you could read between each line. How steadily the seasons blend, night the constant chorus. How easily the stars fall, the firmament laden with debt. I could call in my markers. I could count the incalculable promenade of absence, the broken rosary of birds on the wire. The words would only linger on your lips. A dose too bitter and thick to swallow.

This is always the trick to telling, the brickwork of language so dull with time. I am always missing my mark, picking the wrong symbol or the mistaken thing. Words are only the residue of so much breathing, the resin clinging to the ash. We step between insistences, tenses shifting from past to present, the native language depending on the position of the sun and the closeness of the sea. There is only one person we wear from the inside or inside out. There is only one tongue, strong and careless, folding every moment, breaking every voice. I clear my throat, then I listen-- the half full moon running wild in the trees.