float

It would ease my mind a little to see you as we spoke, the light easing into your eyes, your fingers flicking your hair away from your face. It would make it a little easier to know you were you, not only words lingering in the dark. I scan the line, I read alone, I turn the loud music down low. Your voice rises and falls, clinging to the cobwebs in the corners, walking these hallways like yet another ghost. I get lost as the words drift by, imagining them leaving your lips.

I have gone so wrong that even blessings are a burden. I have gone so wrong that even a kiss would cut me through. The dry green season losing its hue as the rhythm section reaches the bridge, a lovely tune held aloft in a language I do not know. The melody all the meaning I can find as the winds rise and night falls. Scolded by scrub jays and mockingbirds, wounded by my will and the mirror, I tread the thread of reason. One thing, and then another. These wishes, then the world.

Leaf and needle, stone and dirt. The season does all the work. When daylight is left the gutters skitter and hiss. When the night is upon us all bets are off. I listen to the subtext, deluged by the overflow. Reason and reckoning, the details you spare as you spend your breath settle in the corners, rattling the chairs. Dish and spoon, cow and moon, the crow decries my simple sanctimony. I wear the same ruined skin, the same dull hostility, blood and bone and this latest incarnation. You speak that silken incantation, and your mouth draws down the sky. You speak those slow delicious words, and I cling to the trembling air they elude. I am lost again, everything falling down like stars.