cursory

You know the target by the way they tell, the clothes they wear, the descriptions where they dwell. You know the trouble by the way escape is scaled. Safety by the map of your fool intentions, the blame you take for being in your skin at the inviolable location, all the dangers that being you is akin to. The acceptable breakage and the strange fruit reveal. The list of corrections after a cursory description. The place where it’s safe only revealed in its absence, some other world of some other people. You can tell them by their tales.

We are weak and we are savage, built out from the bone to mob up and shun the other. We’re good for a party or picnic, a bacchanal or a cut the rug. But we’re jealous and we’re petty, and we’re always envious of the wants we got, the way you get yours and ours are absences and licked lips. Take a look what can be done with dumb words and so little will. Think about how far we go to make the words the most. We don’t even call the offer, figuring the blood will phone it in. Chasing shadows, looking away from the light.

Sometimes I hate to look out the window, mostly I try not to answer the door. It’s not that the local view is going to be so bad, or that most answered knockings turn out alright. It’s that there’s little there worth the getting up for. Just cold pitches and sob stories and neighbors complaining about the lawn. You’re never much more than around the corner from torches and pitchforks. You’re seldom more than an effigy once they call you out. An old man, lamenting his lost loves and growing hungers while the butchering blooms. The carnival and the tree of life, and every day the hill.