imagine

The heart settles its business in separate chambers, behind creaking hinges and rushing rhythms. The fitful little mysteries, the frightful tussle of blood and breath always measured by rise and run. These going concerns of life and love and weather, pressed tightly against the ache of ribs. These simple missions of dull resistance and noble sacrifice.

You feel your shadow stretch, moving beneath the tattered sky. That push painting you as shape and stillness as light pours all around. The guileless radiance of this bathing in heat and shine. The sun dwindles into another dead-eyed horizon, and you feel for a moment like a picture trapped on paper. You linger in that distance, a picture outside its frame.

The day will come when the story runs aground. The day will come when all the words run dry. This scatter-shot season of traffic and sirens, of rain storms and sun-burn and the vagrant wind. All the hopes and reasons buried in indifferent dust. All the dreams and burdens at last undone. The heart beaten into stillness, the heart battered by stair and hall. The story plays out, and every telling left to tomorrow's voices waiting to try its luck. Tell me again of all this terror and this glory. Tell me the story of the heart that found a way.