renunciation

I've given up on starlight-- it mostly takes its own sweet time to arrive, hiding somewhere in the depths of time. I've given up on wishes spent and hopes deferred. It has been a week since I shook off what gainful employment I had and ventured into the landscape of these residual outcomes and epic fails. Some battlefield shed of anything but the aftermath. Some action bent around the gravity well of dismal choice and foolish heart, pinpoints of brightness lost in the long everafter before me. Flecks of ash and bouts of rainfall. Shades of gray, depths of shadow. Alone again in these numbing crowds.

The pavement has dried again, in these open moments before the storm, water always finding another level, the sodden gutters and the thirsty wind. A gray and white stray drinks from a puddle, eyes alive, watching for the least proof of inevitable betrayal. Children run and squeal, working all the play they can into this brief respite from the pouring rain. The crows work their rounds in slow circles, following human carelessness and the opportunities provided by riding the heretic winds. They call from the highest vantage, their voices the prototypes for every unseemly machine destined to break the silence of the sky. Everything fits so well when enough is broken.

You will find me in the moonlight. You will see me all a-shambles in the drowsing rain. The headlight flit of a ragged profile turning away into deeper shadows. A trail of smoke idling in the eaves. It is all renunciation. It is all apostasy and bad timing, the certainty of the world expressed in fits and stammers. Words written once all the telling is finished. The story crawling on once the epilogue is done. A life mostly living, whatever secrets are stored or squandered. The reach of light always exceeding the capacity of any eyes to see.