persuasion

You arrive at the shore, but it seems different. Everything they said, everything you hoped, now just the sounds of confusion. Everything that could have been finished by the tide. Pay the boatman, settle any debt. You set foot onto tomorrow, caught in between seeing and belief.

It is always some story unwinding, some tale being embellished in the telling. The calendar reasons and the clock longings, time drying out in the cold dry air. The bright beginnings and the bitter ends, that certainty that there is something that words can convey. Those detailed explanations, those stammered alibi, the story always starting over, the telling all that time will allow. With words alone you cross that vast distance. With words alone you know you have again missed the mark.

We spend these days weary from dreaming. We waste these hours huddled against the cold. The gray escape of rain and cold, the painted landscapes that threaten the windows in the night. Words will nest and words will fly, the sky clotted with definitions, the trees littered with remedy. The mirrors creaks with description, ragged features and ringed eyes. The river rushes past, swollen and capped in white. Waking changes it all.