begin

The road is so long, this traveling too far to remember where it was you began. The broad savannah, the fiery wastes, the dark forests clotted with fog and snow. The press of clay, the burgeoning flood, the wide mirror of the sea all seem so close that the words drizzle along every skin you witness. All these names for things left in the distance of the journey. All this blood flowing upon the altar and weeping in the dust.

Now each crowd seems so familiar, every stranger some kinship just slipping beneath the secrets you keep upon the tip of your tongue. The very closeness somehow pressing these vast traces that much nearer to your heart. Is it in the weather or in the season? The rollicking swoon of the greenery or the shameless flirtation of the stars? There is little that you know any longer. The words flavored with labor and earth.

The surprise passed from failure long before this story began. You miss though your aim is flawless. You disappear despite your unerring fire. So forgotten and sharp and true that there is nothing but the burning, nothing but the abiding smoke and the spark you carry. You linger in the wilds, cling to the gutters and the temples, ring in every song they spit and ruin. We want and want and will not learn. You burn along each wasted breath, almost close enough to hear your name begin.