the welcome

The empty spreads from room to room, it lingers whether I stay, like the shadows rushing in after the light’s switched off. It billows from my belly, anchored to ache and bone. This contraction amid all this primordial expansion, the self read in the rust on the couplings and the cup’s lingering residues. A reflection in the appliances, a trail of blazing  revelations. Alone in a series of small rooms. Obligatory occurrence and the unremitting signal. The church of unperturbed dust. A faith of constant fall.

More and more I am amiss in the coordinates, going from fuse to fuse, like reading a book by matches. A flash, a caption, the slither of heat singeing your fingertips. The story that we knit while we reside between our wits, how quick we read the field. I only see the flash and the fire. The. The darkness as the image persists. The uneasy feeling I should say something in some replayed conversation. Some road apart, before I knew for sure.

I know I wear my welcomes hard, I know I’ll do my best to drop the ball. The rest is a mystery with only proclamation and recanting assured. It’s a bruise and blur. I follow the rails, blind to boot and sky. The end is always a little further ahead, tripping over abandoned crosses, stepping on forgotten gods. The forest grows darke, and the path descends.