litigant

I watch my step around these words with the sun dimming down out here. There's no sense in falling in further than you want. The clutter of sticks and stones waiting to bring this abrupt dance straight to skin and bones. The chill tooth of winter raked along each fingertip. Tomorrow and tomorrow, the path is dark and hungry. You say what you want, wish what you may. These words are only here to stray.

I'm the least of the congregation, the telling truth in the habitual joke, the reason we all need that wolf in the fold. Ice has left me finger blind, my blood just muttered confessions and exasperations. I cough in the dust kicked up with the scuff and trip of my travels, I spit the bitter poems of mistaken lives. Steam spills out my offerings to the confounded firmament, the sky a wash of colors and stubborn stars. I never meet the mystery, but I seem to be on the list. I am all bark and blind-spot, my only grace the strange way I spook. The books aren't there to love you back.

The mistake is always faith in some flawed geometry, learning the wrong end of the lesson. The heart is an axis in the murky gear-work, a language of spark and smolder, an engine of every trembling touch. I lost my place in line once or twice, and I could never find the way back again. Instead I followed the words that call and cling, the older path before the burdens became the claim. The tongue clever when blight takes the mind, I walk where the stepping lets me. The spell all the unwinding of each line, the world just what you let slip when you supposed you were only going to say your name.