contender

The margins of the sky were painted white and gray, the sun lost somewhere in all the artistry. The roads rolled past in a steady blur, slow curves, laden straight aways. The stories I will never know safely speeding past or receding in the rear view. I watched the mirror, and I watched the highway. I was all but empty. For a moment I believed I was free.

There is a balance I was tasked with, a point of alignment, a moment of compression. It is reliant on the belief in remedies, in the knowledge that tomorrow might be something new. It works on the principle that you must wrest the controls from contingency and cruelty, that you might attempt to change some other life. So I contend with the rapists and abusers, the molesters and addicts who have written so many shadows into these stolen souls. I lay the line, I keep the center. I lose the battle almost every day.

Another night chases these labors of loss. Another commute that ends in indolence, another evening pressed into the ash. I write after the drive because I am not driven. I write after work because I am broken still. I dream in simile, I think in analogy, but I live in the world of hurt and heart broke children, cheated of even their best selves. I take my licks, and give it a shot. I lean into my shallow obsessions, my eyes dull and glistening. I drowse on the couch, while my enemies never rest.