past tense

You can always call me when the dark awakes you, so soft and sharp. You can always find me where the night resolves its shine. The cold is there, drifting in vast distance. The cold is close, all the feeling bleeding away from each fingertip, warmed with huddled breath. You could call me, now that the ice arrives.

The flag erupts all feel and color, in this slim memory, this latest slip. Just this afternoon toiling down the freeway, the sky spattering the windshield, the buzzards in the sun. The wind calls the names, the wind drives the rain. The traffic that untangles as you drift between the lanes. Only these hours left behind me. Only these voices painted with wet tires.

The day ends, and I can feel the minutes adding up, these sudden aspirations. I lean into the slow knowing of the meagerness of this endurance, the aimlessness of these scripts and scars. The night arrives, and I am left with only past tense. The words acquired by the gathering of accident. The slow betrothal of zero to zero, the name of everything unsaid.