star bright

The days turn to dust, our lives these bright passages read aloud, these celebrated excerpts of unremarkable texts. The sky so blue because of a preponderance of water, the world so green from a trick of chemistry. Every word so aptly misspoken, each moment holding its own shine. Each thought arrives cloaked in gray, unfounded and unfolded as if the message mattered. The old fashioned sound of an envelope, aching to be torn open.

I saw you off on your way towards heaven. I saw you line up for your turn in the sky. A light up there in the blue, a star ever shining so bright. You pay for my passage back into my own lonesome, the boatman and the tolls. I pay in the pieces that leave me to be with you each time we part. These languid hours, these whispered kisses. The difference in your absence in the weight of the whole wide world.

It is like how songs stay put in our hearts even as the times and places change. It is like the way we remember ourselves in some past incarnation so completely that sometimes the mirror is a sudden cause for alarm. I feel  the feelings, I say the words, however unsuited, however inappropriate. The letters scrawl, the letters dry, folded clumsy and meant for keeping close. I write the words the way they come, though the world has turned and turned. The blue in the sky, the star burning bright. This lovely coincidence, this beautiful brief existence.