the burn

The sun comes out though the heart’s occluded, it shines and blazes and barely touches the mouldering bones and the desiccated flesh that it beats so readily and burns so quickly. Breath labors while the hammer beats out despite the failings of the revenant, the swaying of the tree tops, the sweep of the brushed out blue. The yard ebbs and flows, cats and dogs, birds and squirrels, disparate sets scattered across debris and flora. The ever present exchange of tire squeals and children screaming keeps its own schedule, the entity and the organism in pitched disagreement as the wind sweeps the world away. The sun cycles down some, the lingering feel of the burn speaking clearly clean through.

I’m played out. I’ve tapped out, surrendered, left the building and all. There only pull besides a couple of cute little duties left me is the burdensome blood and bones, this ever errant meat flopping around on the pavement, this sea of scabs and appetites unconcerned with gods and philosophies. The name diminishes with the fallen body, words like the stitch work in steam, lost before read or spoken. Yet the entity won’t let it lie. The unbound wings and the boundless depth of this startled sky. The winds run through and reach into the onslaught of night, the shadows dozing in my lap. I can’t go, the animal won’t let loose. The night sits beside me. 

I smoke some more, I sit and spin, out on the twilight porch watching the traffic pass and idle. The line of last light rises, the swallows swoop and spire, children dismayingly play in the righteous weft of the wind. The heft of the wore down heart still hitting hard, I shift like the sky, uneasily from day to night favoring a hip. The crows call out from some winged distance, ever the race to the roost. I give way to the feasts and the rituals, the families flush from the unburdening moon. I give way to the light that is leaving, and the day when all will end. Until then I keep up with the continuity. The way a fire might take notes.