write off

I stood outside as the dusk took the day, feeding mosquitoes and filling in for shadows in the night. A long spacious conversation spent itself into the gutters and the weeds, taking up the lion’s share of the late afternoon. I got behind in my smoking and my wording, still playing catch up as I type. I’m not quite back at writing off writing again, but we are spending a lot of time in that neighborhood lately. The words aren’t into me anymore, and it makes sense to let go of this last lingering romance. The silence only grows.

The wax on moon, the half glass fool, the sad repetitions. The switches tripped and the lights left on, television jabbering against these sleep thickened walls. The stations change and the story drags on. Someone loved, someone left, something changed in an old familiar way. War stories down the end of the driveway. Body counts filling where the words won’t go. The night a buzz with breath and blood. The words livid with wishes and wounds. 

I feel the slow peeling away from the real, the distance between root and ritual, the autonomic spells dissolving upon perception, the world at once all last gasp and true blue. The words still and fade. Once the saying was something that thought it needed hearing, now the saying is something to keep the nothing another day away. The world so insistently around me, the words holes worn through. It’s not nothing, but it’s getting there. The gone always gets there first.