fortissimo

What would we be but bones and feathers were we the wings beating? Where would we end up but the ash heap with all the world gone to burning? It all wears down, the color of your hair, the stitching in the seams. The cooked and rotted world heavy with heat and thick with fickle flies, in it for the thrill, in it for a taste. We go from grease to gristle, from fetished flesh to worm turned earth so quick we barely notice the going of the ghost. From strength to staggered in the stance. The wings wild against the window, the curtains billowing against the breeze.

The sun beats down on all this striving, the sermons and the lessons burning just the same. Dry lips attended by a thirsty tongue, the pavement rippled with mirages, eyes blind from the light. Old bones carry the imprints of past injuries, sing the songs of storm and stone, the dust they were the dust they will be. Sometimes it takes years and years, sometimes it all happens at once. The body breaks, despite its dreams and directions. The body breaks, despite its stamina and its tears. In the delicacy of aging, even the softballs are brutal. 

There are the things the papers claim, the privilege that words are afforded if you add more words. There are the things attached to our names, strings of flags and patches, litanies of faith and affiliation that gather around the lucky and the well behaved. The eyes fail and the hearing goes, the kid across the counter and the voice on the phone, our voices rising to fill the absent context. Our worlds shriveling in, our bodies gossamer and lard, we speak our orders to all that is already looking away. Songs so old and out of fashion we can only play them loud.