the story that I told

The chill moves from the wind to my bones, ringing the blood from my knuckles, slowly killing the worn flesh of my hands. The rain spattered about the streets and hills, blotting out the blue of the sky, beating the leaves from the trees. Each joint feels the crush of rust, each muscle the teething of hungry fire. Time stitches together its apologies. Time catches up to every corpse.

The bitter portion is cut from these spent wishes. The hardest morsel the medallion cut from the world that never was. These elementary ambitions, the native expectations, the belief in love and exception all play out in grays and blues. This shambling exile, this spit flecked hermitage. The lonesome notion made worse by the resilience of dreams.

I wander the borders of winter, thick and dull and redolent of distant pleasures. Autumn strides across this town, trimming trees and spilling smoke. The skies fill with clouds and anxious flocks, the gutters fill with leaf and glass. It isn't only the years, it isn't only the miles. It isn't the certainty that is settling in that I am well into the epilogue, empty and bent towards the abyss. It is the resonance of want, worn through the reach and pitch of being. The story that I told myself, somehow missing from the world.