contraction

All at once the lights go on, the story already started. All the sudden the phrase just turns, and leads the road away. Follow the smoke of burning bridges, the sooty trail of the star in falling. Ribbons tangle, ribbons untie, her hair is loosed and wild. Spilling down her shoulders, sliding around her neck, all slender care and suspect shine. The days flow like wine, pouring down the bottle, filling up our cups. The days burn, soft flames and tactful ashes. Some spill, some are sundered. The blessed wonder of the words undone. Imaginations run wild, the way they often do.


The night makes its case first to faces. Her hair spills free, her eyes are hidden by her halo, the weight of suggestion lit from behind. The catch of the camera, something is held back. An aspect the poorest eyes find evident, the least glimpse rife with proof. The lividity only speaking from the glass and chimes, witnesses left unstruck and ordinary, just the light as it leaves. The way shadows fill the windows, the night's only cloister at first glance inside. The way the door is left wide open, lost looking for keys and locks.

The sun sets on all sorts of business, the most always unfinished, the endings all start over again. Empire's reach exceeding freedom's grip, fragments stick and fester, the future read out in pus and blood. Each wound the beginning of a journey, every road unwinding in the breath and in the beating. The least of us abridgment, elliptic between the story's motions, the details best left to innuendo and the imagination. We say too much to not say less. We speak aloud to give the spirit to the spell. Letters sticking to every line, the vague suggestion all the rest. Letters written on torn time, her absence all they reveal.