sinister

The wrong hand laid into it, abandoning all hope of craft or labor. The wrong touch is on it, all hope buried again beneath all the ruins. It is in the chill that lingers, it is in the night that crawls, this wayward notion, this stumbled path. Hunger and thirst, all the hounds of habit are loosed. The dream is lost somewhere in the middle of the moon on the mend. The dream is lost in the depths of sleep. Waking can never be the same.

Time runs hot, time runs cold, the clock spins and sputters. These fingers feel the bite of each keystroke, strolling down the alphabet and listing from the dictionary. A little chill seeps in, and the hands carry it first. Ice touches knuckle and burns flesh, this ache so strange for the middle of May. Strange weather, odd feathers to claim familial rights, age telling time by every failure of the flesh. Odd ducks are often the first to feel the teeth.

Lost letter, broken poem, what shore is left for searching? What light is left to follow in this stray storm, this unseasonable rain? All the doors are closed, all the locks are checked. The old dog snoring so loud in the living room that sometimes the windows shake. The litany of strays waiting on the porch, carrying their lame complaints and proud diseases. Forgetting is the only option I never try, with memory so full of crushed bones and disappointments. Forgetting is a promise that the clock will keep with all its counting. The wrong hand never steady or stayed.