All at once the day goes

All at once the day goes gray, though every ruckus stays the same. The drift of music, the dogs kicking gravel as they go. The air exchanges breath for breathing, the wheel just turns and turns. I save a portion for the Sky Kings, settle up with a little smoke left over for the wind. It is the endless idle of the changing tide, the moment after the covered cough, the sleeve left to embrace each indignity. I shrug and amend the sacrifice. I abandon my offer to the tumult calling up the embers. I burn a little for every god that's not.

The cats patrol, the scrub jay objects, and the dogs dance their dance of speed and circles. The winds all wild the day away. Rain is hinting of its coming, the taste and press of its kiss in the air, the cool gray draw of this idle afternoon. I miss the rain the way I miss you. I miss you in long pauses and breathless always, the words always a flurry when the meaning runs low. The shift of the sky, the shadows cast from sun. This sense of you as drizzle to drench. The strange sorcery of the ordinary in our every exchange.

I will never know just where your spell ends and this gap in the world begins. I will never see past the comedy of knowing just enough about my limits, enough about the world to know your every urgent sacrifice for love. This slow fade, this dense gaff of concentration, all the days and weeks of ache and want and wishing more and more. That cinematic arc where the cloud passes and the sun is all there is. The light behind your eyes when  they are lit by your smile. All these whispers that wind up wishes in the end.