the prestige

There is something left to be said, always that last thought, that bitter reminder of hopes dashed. That map of the future that will never happen. That road of contingencies that will always wash you back home. That shock and impact that makes it impossible to look away. That wish met with cold fingers, the furtive pleading after heat. My knee aches, your glass is empty. There are so many words spent pursing futile truth.

The water is icy, the breath is short. Why must the telling always slow in the abandonment of certainty? Why must the quick changes and doomed temples so outweigh the long trend of endurance, that consistency that seems so much more overthrown by the proof that eternity is so easily overturned? The rhetoric the endless sounding of increments, distinctions between wait and pause. This least reach must have it all. This solution bright and clear and true.

Was it an answer? That slight leaning towards the window, the bending of being and light. Seeing you closer though further apart. That sin of smoke, that press of rain. The changes in the atmosphere always the most binding of language. So much in the weather this sheen of grace. The frost trickling off of those fickle stars. That question only you know I demand.