lights out

The mirror is finished with me, this long and vacant day. The shadows cling, thick and inky in the cold wet yard. The clock misses every kind of time-- from too much to not enough, the feast and famine measure it makes of our lives. The hour that drawls on and on, the month that slips past without so much as a mark, these are the only markers left. Someone needs to dowse whatever flame is left.

The night grows colder, the room dank and still. Somewhere there are violins, the suspect string section sentiments unravelling on the floor. Somewhere voices crack with static, heavy feet shuffling across worn through tile. The pipes beat out their usual alarms, the suspect rhythms of water finding its level. There is laughter, there is dancing, there are all the tones and colors that light binds to the world. Never here, but that is only one sliver. Never me, but the numbers never looked good.

I can smell it in the air, I can feel it in my bones. This winter that rings out in left knee, this weary that has long since claimed my right hip. Snow falls and falls in the Sierras. Roads close as families gather to be seasonally affected. I make a few plans that by now it is plain I haven't the courage to carry out. I creak and I clatter, made from rotted chains and false assumptions. I drift and I dally, useless and without any claim left to make. Sleep is as close as I might manage. Dreams are as far as I can get.