linger

There’s not much to be done with it won’t do. Wards and mottos spilled out the mouth, oaths and qualifiers there to stain the air while whatever happens happens. These spells and expletives we sling at the slightest and at the worst linger while the world keeps going. Words turned like compost to keep it all alive. You wake up and the corridor is open. You wake up and the scene is slowly set. Things happen, things don’t happen, the reel goes ‘round and ‘round. It is always now until it’s next. Then it is there until the winds are stirred. Then is now until the next now begins.

It is the difference between the taste upon your lips and the taste your tongue goes looking for as it licks up memories. The moment of heat and flush, salt and sacrament at once, the punctuation of that fervid kiss. The act of inhabitance a loitering in the sway of feel and flesh, the storm of language ignited as cognition and context take hold. Here I am being where I am not thinking of, a stagger and a stutter, the flicker of the film. Faith held only where the skin can reach. Passion only so much purchase in the press of intention. The story comes with the trip.

It’s the screen black surface, steel cup and billowing steam, the dream on down to the reflections stretched and swallowed. The black habit coffee to join the smoke. The dusty volumes and animal traffic. The open window and the bump and grind night. The shock to the system, the stain to the step. Living right there, in your ken and scent. This abrupt evocation, your fingers tracing plastic, your fingers finding flesh. There right now and there before, there in ways only to imagine. Eyes closed where the roads meet and paths begin and end. Lingering in the unknown, knowing just what you’ll find.