medicine show

The short timer sun sticks a finger in my eye, rays of reckoning rubbing negatives into my retina, smoke unfurling from my fingers. Birdsong bubbling down to the roots from the crown, the stories they tell to soothe the skies and ward the stones mingling with the put on poignancy  the dusk is always hustling. Vague hints and fool’s prophecy as they put the day’s business to rest. Sights turned to silhouettes as the air cools and the smoke brushes my tongue with silk and cinders. Another day gone slow then done.

Sparrows burble and hustle, fitting in a quick meal before the long dark night. The nights run long of late, and I have been deep in the labyrinth looking for a Minotaur to take out my insides on. The tide of night washes in, the horizon still soft golds and drifting pinks, dusk filling out and climbing down from the rooftops and trees. I sit quietly and take my medicine. Thick smoke, black coffee, and beauty so far away you break.

I am the silt among the sacraments, the source of these sacred texts. Taking in that last bright sky, watching the moon as it looms in your night, written in some forgotten margin or spilling from the pages of a marooned book. I sit amid your garden, and remember where you put the stars. I am the map of furtive moments, the agent of the ink before it flows. Waking in the words that find you, turning in the cauldron of your bones. We will meet before and after, filling in every little in between. We will meet in all the places, though I am not there. The breath before it’s spoken. The medicine in the show.