dispossessed

It climbs through the cracks in the hours, hours breaking in waves and sparks. It creeps through the broken laughter of distant voices, falling from the trees and stars. It slips into your skin, mild as an idle shiver. Simple as goose-flesh from a breeze. It is all of your thinking when your thoughts grow wild. It is every empty sky and vacant lot untroubled by the dark.

We shift skins and walk with our bones on fire, inventions left scaling the flames that rise and rise. The soot we scatter and the dust we shed, foot steps trailing into the unseen night. Every breath feels a little fever, every guilty symptom a tear. Having walked so far from the fire that we have learned to live always alight. Having wandered long enough to feel it in the stars.

Speak this first, before shedding another breath. Speak this soft, before all restraint is lost. The sky is cluttered with all these threadbare constellations. The night is spread gentle and deep. This is the way of all wounds and treasures. This is the way of all theft and awkward truths. Say it to the brigand dawn or the traitor dusk. There is no place that is not home. This is where I am.