borrowed

Breath by breath we scrub the sky, the wind in tiny fragments, the machine of too many pieces to count. We stroke the strings until it is music, we wear the season  until we see the bones. The way each object rolls slowly through your fingers. The way each instance slips through your hands. We are open to the atmosphere, draw and spill, scrimp and save. We are caught in the speed of the shutter, painted by this deluge of light. Pictures on the mantle, moths to the flame. We cut ahead  in the line, always holding a place open. We are incessant invitations, virus and bacter, angels and bad actors. We fill and empty, pinpoints upon the flow.

You stare at the dashboard as the engine idles. Head lights pooled upon the garage door, the driveway marked by warm tires and stray paper. You ask yourself these midnight questions catching your eye in the rearview mirror. Is this me? Is this it? Is this the map or the wake of days? You talk to all the ones that are never there. The voice of your heart the tinny euphemisms of storybooks and old movies. The story of your life a movie you make up as you go. The seedy theatrics as your flesh impels you. The embarrassed revelation of who you are as you shut off the engine and go inside.

It is the breathless edge of this brittle thinking. Check the book and bang the gavel. Repeat it until you call it law. Stray from your notes all you like. We spill and gather, following smoke and circling the drain. God closing doors and each exit being an entrance. We pass the word in whispers, hold it close and tight. We thread the world in our sacred habits, pull the cork and take a swallow. We grow upon our heaps and mendicant dreams. Seeds and fruit, work and fallow. We spin and reel, taking our joy from the next one over. The bountiful harvest, and each hunger it ensures.