testify

Believe me, the truth will be sooner than you'd like. All our heights of exasperation, all our pretty, sticky little lies, these tales stretched and bent to fit our favor. They slip away while they still linger sweetly at our lips, they dissipate before the press of breath leaves the skin. All this ardent condensation duly informs the ghost, as these earnest words seem to you like wounds. The startled face of fall all at once filling the gutters. The way that winter can strip the flesh off a word, leaving these glistening bones to freeze.

The sun soon abandons its insistence, the old dead roots singing blind their unburden. The warmth on your back gives way to the biting breeze. All the colors return to their unlit frequencies, resonating this song of shape and shadow. Each slow stretch another ancient struggle, the structure there to show what these sayings wouldn't. The coils of smoke and dust that shimmer in these few last lit hours. My story all burned down, turned mounds and the smolder of these feeble motives. My life just eyes closed while the sun will still caress my face.

The head counts out its ultimatums, the heart beats out only it wills. The words I find, the words I follow some kind of painting on the skins of whim. Appetite and sensation, these stories we build to clothe our want. The truth only shrugs and tells it has nothing more to tell us. Make what you want of it, this is just you. I know how I long to cling to your motion, how much of my wishes are always sticking to you. What you mean to me doesn't need to mean anything to you. I await your revelation. You don't need me to testify.