humbled

I need just enough sleep to keep the night out, just enough roof to shit the sky out, that feeling of falling about all I know. The gray day seeps in somehow, the old aches seething straight down to the bones. The hush of tires on the wet road, the nattering of gears in the dark. Every promise plugged into something. Every oath a button pressed. The sirens sound and the dogs let loose. I am staring at the shadows. I am sitting in the dark.

Stared at by the shining eyes of electronics, the world always winding away inside these secrets, the pace kept even while sleeping. Every breath comes back in coughs and sputters. Each leaning some struggle with-in the blood, these glowing screens and comfort noises squeezed from our fingers and our phones. Something falls outside the house, even the walls allowing stunned alarms. Wind chimes peal and the rain comes unsteady. The still house trembles in the weather as winter drains away.

There's no use for your culture heroes. There's no need to drag around ghosts. The world is enough a stranger that it needs no disguises. The truth is harder than horror stories, why deify our brutal aimless deaths? I sleep and wake in fitful stretches and empty stretches, the window open to the alien eyes of the night and the ruckus run amok of the day. I linger here, hunched over a few meager empirical hopes. The words clip clop in dull cliche, fumbling with my thumbs and contexts, always working towards the muddle. Meaning gleaned only after an eternity lost to time. The story told only to hold back all these fallen stars.