little piggies

The last little pig never knew the wolf, only the burials and the brickwork. The last little pig made his house from words, and was never found again. The black and white gave the lay of the land, the stretch and strut of wave after wave of breathless words condensed against these quaking conceptions. The fervid urgency he made in these long braids of telling, the spell of want and the spell of will, wall after wall found by baffled back and bruised shoulder, the cool quiet floor a respite for heel and knee. The last little pig explained away the world, speaking just enough to give the gist. The wolf huffed and puffed another world away.

The story always returns to the tongue, the names live slyly alongside the heart. The hopeless must of this daylight dreaming, the dredge and flash of these wishes Left to roam. The words all stick to circumstance, the hunger so big and bad. It prowls the halls of each reflection, wears the mirrors of ancient angles. The aim somehow held aloft by stripes of breath and shadow. The target always some drift of heart.

The wolf still will huff and puff, blow down those foolish doors. The dreams will stretch in disarray as I stumble and I grope. The meaning so far from the road we wandered so far down. The piggies always being counted as the soul of appetite, the fed always still food. The way the words bend and break, threading roses through our bones. We pass in the sing song way of lullabies, we lean into the fray. The dull retort of plaintive kisses goodnight, such weight as breath can breathe to wishes. The lonely hearth so far from danger, flickering in the shadows of another long goodbye.