husk

There’s no reason now that the rhyme has curdled, blood rush indemnity and the sudden death of the day. It’s all answers now that the asking is done. The coffee sulks and steams in the ritual steel, bitter and so near to burning. There is a breeze in the back of the throat of night, tickling the stubborn heat from the air, my flesh stippled with hunger and hapless sweat. I am the perpetuity of intermittence. I am thick with ink and time.

Call out to me like there’s no tomorrow. Add my name to your list. Whether the settled bet or the diligence due, we’re all waiting for our cue. The sky shifts and night descends. The dead street and the parlance of cars. I will not return.

Brake light glow and the clamor of children. A flash of headlights leave their watermark in the eyes, sigils blazed into the brain. The nested promises, buried in the retinue of act and instance, stir slowly: the dawdling, sorry story of the journey from A to B. The algorithm nestling in the atrophied alchemy of the scuffing and the self. The melodious stories and the tenderness of the abandoned animal. I flip a switch. The lie of light fills the husk.