promise

The day is a mottled writhing, ashen gray to tropical blue to all manner of insistent green. The air is warm and the wind is on the rise. There are whispers of rain gathering in the atmosphere, and the languid earth is ignoring every rumor. Bees clotted the blooms on a lavender bush, and my eyes are itching distractedly. Fires alight on every surface. Freedom mostly too much motion to capture, too much music to hold onto that one dance.

Black coffee and the grubby stubble of a week's worth of beard. The moon almost full enough to burst, and everything sways and sings. The strays assemble at their many stations, expectant and aloof. There are chores enough left once all the chores are through, work enough to seed the fallow fields of generations to come. There is road enough left for all this wander, room enough for feast and ruin. The world replayed in smoke and ash.

The day is a-shambles, hunched and longing for the night. Storm warnings and carnal longings. The steel cup and the slick words. A shaved head and a scratchy muzzle. Long past the time for declarations they ring out again and again. Oaths of false courage and drunken fears. Claims made against the precipice of the absolute bound to make the most earnest and honorable a liar in the end. The dusk awaits the scattered songs and the thousand dances. The only promise rising in the wind.