empty ever after

The dust settles and you know that there is nothing but this legacy of want and ache finally folding to a close. The turn of phrase at long last buried in the muddled history of this life long catch and release. The urgent journals and the breathless letters lost and forgotten, the statues on the altar huddled in their mysteries, their names and reasons all forgotten. This turmoil to be acknowledged a confession to the self. There will be no saving grace, no game changing act of contrition. The sickness in my flesh the failings in my soul. I leave behind some wounds and laughs, the empty of the echo, the aimlessness of words gathered on the line. The pointless press of fingers checking a corpse's pulse.

Today the pain presents as the weight and heat of molten lead, searing away at my unsettled guts. The chain of causality glistening and cruel, dragging each link through this fading flesh. No balm or medicine comes to mind, just the dull progression of human frailty camped out in these aching bones. Just the certainty of my errors piled by the door. My fanatic heart just weeps and rages, even the most ruined flesh still wanting what it wants. Everything is what it is becomes the canonical answer, a shrug and a shiver and winter on the way. The hour arrives, and no amount of staying will ever make me right. Settle your debts and find the door. Drink up and go, because you can't stay here.

Oh but the sky is lovely though the air is sharp and cold. Oh but the day was gorgeous though I am sick and without value. My pockets only ever full of hands, my fingers always fumbling without a find. A heart full of beasts and hesitations, storms and bones and mysteries knit into the tissue, grace and purpose never to be found. Always in love outside my numbers, always like some sermon read by lightning and written in the strange crawl towards life. Words let loose with no more matter than the readiness for the next breath. Fables wound around my ever fiber that I will never share. I have no words for the setting sun or the coming stars. Just the empty ever after. Just the day like all things ending.