after hours

The day grazes on the easy blessings, the bright of sky, the bent of branch. The work of root and wing, the crush of sun and the glib turn of the winds. The aches and woes soaked in the daily breading, kept to the back of the workings of a busy mind. The distractions and compulsions that map it out and keep it moving. Then at once, the night is coming. The sky breaks in the canopy and heaven’s remainders. It’s after hours where the teeth come out, the night there all at once.

The smoke crawls the dusty, ill lit walls. The steam clings to the steel of the coffee cup. The reading lamp haloed in brushed steel and bent aluminum, the light cupped in concentric circles. The black, bitter coffee already cools, a pool of ink and dreaming upon a languid tongue. It’s late and things still aren’t wrapped up. It’s early if you think of it, but no one else will think this way. The crawl of the rhythm, the bursts of writhing horns. The fan rattles incessant. Endless oscillations slapping the air around. For a moment the flesh cools. For a moment the clock counts. 

There is the plaintive painting squinting into the sun you saw there. There are the stations of grace and appetite empty in the shine of the bare bulb, the once and never more. The piano music playing prays to some unmet direction, the plea always in place, the calling all there is of us. The bones turn over slow, rethreading the spool as the flesh melts and blood boils. The organism ever one place or another. Places you had seen and touched, the light the gift of you looking. Your eyes the writing of the sign.