midnight to stevens

The words were all dissolved in wax, those fitful whispers, that crisp descent. The sound of cement and glass bottles, the sound of rain pruning the leaves from the trees. The old analog hush just out of earshot, the needle fitting the secrets of every groove. The taste of moonlight, the tongue cast in sand. That sadness of a song filling the air like a crypt sweet with decay. That sadness of a soul wrecked on some lost shore, watching the sky turn away.

I staggered in the sunlight, something wrong running rampant in my blood. The day too bold and bright, lashing out at my pale winter flesh and my eyes best left to words on paper or pictures on a screen. An anchor sinking in the heat of a foundry, a last breath trapped beneath the sealed kiss of ice. Dizzy despite the stillness, weary despite the hour. I would have remembered all your tricks and angels had your halo left me some kind of blind. I would have had a leg to stand on had your rising never ruined the earth.

That early hour, that face in the window. The details all clamoring at the surface, the reasons all drowned long ago. This day, this night, tomorrow and all its kin. A litany of feasts and observations. A lighting of so many candles, the knelling of a handful of bells. It is that the song took decades to sink through this dissolution. It is that there is never a witness to one thing that is true. These dead troubadours, these moldering poets. The secret revealed just as all eyes are hidden. The longing only there to linger on.