traction

Painted green in patience, the world skews vaguely towards the clock. The placment of the causeways, the reach of the flora. Each skin wears a countdown, each name earns a notch. Between arrivals and departues, we are our dispatch due. Glass and plastic, carpet and tarmac, every surface bears this wait. The sky is graced with clouds and planes. These abrupt disagreements with gravity.

I wait like all the others, in contention and dismay. The aches all settle in as the plans continually change. The words stack like cordwood, the words stack like bricks. The plane evades all prayers and numbers. The plane is a story that changes as it goes. My mumbling heart can ken its kin, even as the blood starts to burn.

It doesn't take too long for the tale to take. A few scattered words, a quick slip of the tongue, and all the crows have settled on their plates. We sidle past our purpose, we outlive our truth. The sky once so full of heaven now stippled with brittle light. Buoyancy built of vast engines and startled carbon, lift left to the bitter tills of our trampled hearts. Only left with this world so full of falling.

convalesce

The days arrive wrapped in words-- the good, the bad, the blue. Know the sky by the birds alight, know your bones by the ache. The things we say just slip away. The bare intentions linger. The needs they have you'll never know. They certainly aren't you. Faces slowly start to stray until you're the stranger they once knew. 

I creep along these dusty halls, these dog swept corridors. Quiet in this shuffling skin, the flesh my only heir. Waiting as if in faith, moving as if in chains. I am daunted and I am dire, removed once from this world, never to find my way back. Interred in these jagged hurtful thoughts for all around to witness, each step straying further from sense. There are never words enough for the sort of waste I am.

Return at once to that pristine path, the beloved self, the hidden choir. Let your voice ring out above the fray, let the losses lie. Pretend along some chosen path, sanctify your crimes. Believe in the light that loves you, obey the court where your heart holds sway. Sing out to the unseen heavens, never mindful of the souls you burn for warmth. 

reckoning

The rain returns, settling bets and breaking fasts. The rooftop sluices gravel, and the river of sky spills over, wedding waterfalls with gutter streams, turning the wheel yet again. Green weeds and lovely mud scatter like markers on a map. The landscape squirms beneath the slovenly pavement, freeing aging rumors from shallow graves. All the ghosts in motion, the storm beckons and bends the mind askew. 

We place our labels, we hold our breath, we wait and wander through word and skin. The story steals our reason. The story clouds each sense. The world walks one way, and we go another, shouting slogans and singing anthems. The world moves on, and we do not even know its name.

I wait under the awning. I pace the muddy porch. Footprints on slick pavement. A figure in need of distance. A face that wears like a mask. I watch the flood swell and subside, never looking at the rain. The storm holds court in my heart, my dreams all born drowned. The reckoning all that's left me.