the whether

 These are not the days we savor. These are not the joyful hours. The morning smoke from the blazing fires, the choke that grows throughout the afternoon, the early evenings clouds and winds that loosen the cord and drives the clouds through the burdensome blue. We make do, sweating through the swelter, holding our places as long as we can bear. We do without, the thick air full of exhaust and heat, the little room crowded with dust and the sorrow down the years. The walls closing in, life on the downstroke, living in the painful dwindle at the end days’ end. The will is all won’t, the whether, weather or not.

The day is a faraway country, the sun a long lost tongue. The burn quickened dusk comes thick with mosquitoes and broken hearts. The night always off to a staggered start, its parade of wounds and wishes ever more vicious as the losses add up. A bite, a bruise, a cut or a scrape. Sprains and tears and breaks. A body can only be so much. The moon in bloom, the sea of sky a seethe of gray and black. Bones strewn about the rooms, a wheelchair dragged through the darkened halls, the near by hills obscured in shadow and smoke. There are fewer and fewer avenues of escape. Doors left unlocked because there aren’t dangers that would dare. Windows left staring because everyone breaks and looks away. 

The mystery shook me off years ago. The moon and me have long since parted ways. I only know the short cuts, the old ways of moving without hearth or home. The knife and the flint and the starry tomorrows. The wandering of the beasts, the lift of the moonlight taking to the sea. The songs sung by old bones about the rain, the limbs of a lover seeking shelter from a storm. The hail of fists and boots, the sticks and the stones. The falling off in ones and fews as the years burn away. The changing stories to fit the latest lies, the outside all that’s left of us. No more shared beds, no more love letters. The roads were chosen, the sides divided. All that’s left the consequence and the barn owl’s screeching. Pale wings against the gathering grays, the moon’s shift sliding off her shoulder, the burnt smell of scorched earth everywhere.