ballast

The mosquitoes sink to find my skin, my blood that precious chemical that shifts the balance of their ballast, calling the feast down from this dimming shade of heaven. The branches reach out and hold their breath, night always a little strip of winter, the air all around in strange alarm. A distant train wails and roars, shaking the sediment about the air. Miles away the rumble nudges the soles of my feet. All blessing less than the slip of blood each mosquito gluts its guts  on, that least measure of the resonance of native will. I reach out across the gloom and wonder, your smile somehow imbued into every ache and awe. Shimmering wings hover just out of focus, the air only gathering its teeth.

There is a slurry of quick shadows. There comes the usual stretch and scratch as your senses choose your scars, the future another set of lazy prayers. There comes the early stars and planets, telling some fortune in some kind of doublespeak. The stranger on the corner, the branch of the road. The spill of some vast enchantment no better answer than your own. You wait along the broad spectacle, all tremble and fire as the world turns away. You wait at the ebb of heady traffic, these fierce bursts of strange entanglements, mood and geometry and earthly laws, the gravel hiss another named ghost someone worships first. The roads all swollen with darkness and spilling lives.

The night is alive with vicious kisses, the fall clamping down on my bones. The words all swarm and swap their skins, a tide of cherished impressions and worn out jokes, the mystery always a world away. I abide all the names and numbers, the swift whispers that swarm the wind at night. The roads tangle with these shifting alignments, the trees tense and then bow to the wilds and the bristles, a storm called down in homage to each turn of phrase. It is the onus of the atmosphere, the press of static inflames the flesh. I close my eyes and feel each breath spill. This wash of all and naught.