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The chances are you don't remember, my hand on your waist, your name on my lips. The chances are I never lingered longer than the smoke in the air or your scent on my fingers, everything written in lightning, everything so skipped and spent. I was there for a brief and fevered moment, then I was gone. This legacy of splendid flesh, this inheritance of lack and bitter tears. A kiss, a glance, a stray intention. All the words end up paired with was. All the days only stories told around some failing fire.

The day is all dressed up in blues and grays. The sky is scribbled with the scrapings of clouds and the scuffing of wings. The cat drowses on the rusted shed, the dogs doze on the dirt. Everything settles into schtick and splinters, the echoed shells and the old banjo. Everything settles into memory and schema, every sense a substitute for some fable I wrote in heartache or hope. All the blanks filled in with unquestioned answers. All my mistakes the most obvious form of faith.

The lesson isn't gather ye rosebuds. The lesson isn't that beauty fades. The truth is that the truth will never need you. The truth is beauty will watch you bleed away into myth and fiction. To endure is to remember as change takes it all away. These giddy blessings of flesh and feeling, these dull refrains that sing out of every sad romance. The glory and the thunder, the prophetic fall of blood and bone, the indulgent press of skin and hunger all stones skipped across the rippling depths. The world is once and will be in our words and wishes. The world is ever and always a spark extinguished the moment we feel its warmth and see its shine.