the inevitable

The course changes even before the choice is made, probability greased with thought becoming possibility, the unseen path opens and closes as if by whim. One outcome exchanged with another, the teeth that rend the flesh exchanged for brambles or barbed wire. The weight of some imagined terror always pushing the mind around. The ache of some remembered wrong only another ghost trying hard to hide the world. I don't know from tomorrow, my thoughts chasing after the calendar and the blade.

The radio won't sing the song you need. The singer won't take your requests. Your name is still chained vaguely around your neck, an anchor for another object that doesn't quite get the drift. Clouds stretch and sigh, pausing to cast a shadow, slowing to shed some rain. The sun is warm in bites and swallows, groping at whatever flesh it finds. There isn't better due upon the horizon. There isn't a reason any better than a rhyme.

I stay my hand again and again. I know that these feelings are not your fault. I know that these thieves and strangers have their own roads to work, their own worlds to lie for. I neither confess or pretend. A song wanders by, a glaring remainder of childhood notions creeping in its wake. Those breathless moments, puzzling out lyric and melody in the hushed comfort of a temporary truce. Safety and certainty cargo cults dropped by accident into that teeming jungle. I left too soon and stayed too long. One answer left that wants me, every question gone off the reservation. By default and definition, the inevitable wins again.