any lost star

I burn for all that is beyond me, consumed by the many amplitudes of that which I am not. From blue sky to black sky to every shade and color in between, the mood swings and sways while the outcome remains the same. Those greener pastures and neighbors' outpacings, those wicked covetings and windows that ache for shades. It is a simple sickness, a typical course so much more common than my native tongue. I spark and smolder, distant and dumb as any lost star.

So the shine of that light left waiting, so the glow of that candle kept alight through the night. The smell of smoke and the taste of dust, pine trees casting shadows, travelers burning daylight away. I watch as sunshine is filtered through a redwood fence. I watch as starlight stipples the sprawling tree-limbs. It is the lay of the land as summer fog clings to the ardor of green hills. It is the stretch of the road as it opens to the day. Pace is kept close to the cusp of land and sky. Even the lost and the strays found in place.

Dusk grows, straddled by bird and bat and mosquito bite. Night falls, weighed down with the lonely stars and this tumbling earth. A bitter flavor stuck to my teeth, a sheen of perspiration carried over from the tail-end of the day. Another turn of phrase, another whispered word caught in the wind. I cannot turn back the clock, I cannot change the day. You are beyond the gleam of this horizon. You are beyond smoke and signal, as far as any star.