rote

Gone are the days of rain and windowpanes, sleeping in after staying out, the insistent afternoon sun and the sunday newspaper. Gone is the tooth and touch of life's pull and strut, the bodies inhabited once by these hungry ghosts now gone back to the sea. Hands claps and heels click, the curtain call never lasts forever. The rooms empty, keeping their hands to themselves. The dismal moon set sail for another country, the shades are all drawn down.

There is no mystery. Life goes on until something stops it, then life starts up somewhere else. We are worlds slipping upon the skins of worlds, a drizzling of latent faith, a smattering of cheap applause. The starts and stops and gaps and continuities are all works of constant interpretation, pins placed at random on a featureless map. I missed you then as I miss you still, a longing that is part memory and part apology. A greed without redeeming features, a hole without hope of repair.

When the gray reaches come to ground, I ask after you. Your name sweetens the scar of my voice, speaking to the ice in the air. Your name binds the stars to my watch, this witness of clouds and weather. I reach again that sleepless hour, I speak again that weary word. The skies abide my indiscretions, the world continues sliding beneath my feet. The night keeps falling like a wishing star extinguished.