purchase

The street settles on the gray of slate, painted with the sunken light and spattered rain. I swallow the cooling coffee, tasting ash and metal. The day stretches onwards, strangling whatever sunlight can slide past the clouds. I think that I should leave a marker, set a stone. Place some sort of reminder for this tangle of mismatched moments, the afternoon when the last reserve of romance was at long last spent. An X marked on a calendar, a dot on a timeline kept only in my head. Empty resounds among the clutter of ideas and symbols. Empty is the body eternity wears in these brief cages and dour measures.

I keep company with the drift of days and weather. I keep time to the calls of feeding birds and the vagaries of the rain. Flower pots either drowned or dry, full of water and dirt and the failed roots of blossom long dead and gone. These trials of failed organism and failed person, the niche believed in now only clipped ribbons and saved letters. These trails of salt and promise leavened to extinction by sunlight and time. There is no end to the writhing of words when we mistake writing for speech. The infection is all but endless amid all these squalid limitations. This sickness the only cherished thing left.

This is the blessing of this bitter endurance, the standard won of taking the brutal and the fragile as they come. Outlive the living and the telling, witness every name boil away on tooth and breath. Feel the ache of poor technique and cut corners, the pain of surviving such pointless chimes of loss. Every task a fool's errand, every word either theft or imposition. This is the furtive resonance of bone, pealing brightly into the firmament. This is the collection of residue, the gathering of all this waste and grandeur. This life, stolen and blasphemed. This life, losing purchase along the edge of dusk.