the dark

 I pass the blazing day in a soaked stupor, the heat melting me down to stillness and sorrow. Grease in the skillet, news on the morrow. The night arrives but the heat gives no quarter, the stifling sky smeared with smirking stars, the hubris changing state as the mortality flares up. Now it’s hot black coffee at 1:30 in the morning, lit by screen and the heavens obscured by silhouettes, music in my ears as I sit out back with my growing lonely and the buffeting of bugs. It is almost cool, it is almost quiet. Worn flesh and bone sitting out alone in the dark.

I face the west, watch the glow of the town rise above fence and tree top, the light pollution that cuts the night and dims the stars. I stare at the air and feel fool wishes run wild still, the longing leaning hard on this dismal existence. The dark plays tricks upon a hungry heart, tells it stories that play dress up with the facts. You weren’t even here when you were here, why would you be here once you’re gone? Reviled by family and friends, it’s as if my sad selfish soul goes all in on some fool dream where the way things are and have always been do a 180 all the sudden. It’s like planning for the afterlife while life runs off the rails. It’s the tired tale where the maligned orphan turns out to be the chosen one. In the dark my heart tries to tell me I’m Harry Potter. 

The night continues, the shadows loom, a little dog barks and barks. There is no respite left me. Tiny moths scuttle madly across the screen as I tip tap my thumbs along the QWERTY keys, crazy cursors run amok on the electrostatic glass. It feels as if there is a momentum gathering, a devastating reckoning due from a lifetime of deferred payments and dodged shots. The work ahead seems unbearable, lacking tools and aid, but it will be completed one way or another. Once it is finished, I think I am too. Let the bugs and the dust follow me into the darkness. Settle the last bet with a bullet or a belt.