done undone

Again the light and its limits, again the words all but spurned. The waste of breath and ache, heart beating hard, staring at the ceiling. The day bent and broken, slumped in its chair, swimming in its suit. I stare at familiar fictions, no longer able to act out my own. The television drawls, the fan whirs. The coffee sits cooling in the cup.

The clenched shoulders of untempered angst, the grind of tooth and nose. The gears spin slow, the days flying by, the nights white knuckle rides. The sorrow overtakes the flesh. Each day it all slips away. Every night the play by play on the replay. Done, and undone.

The machine keeps plodding, a collector of enigma, a weaver of mystery. Generate the labyrinth when you run out of Minotaur to hunt. The seeder of need, the whisperer in the night, this vast somnambulance. The words eating away at the sentence. The words separating the wings from the song. The automatic operant, the vine writhing toward the sun. This drift, this drag.