fixture

It’s already outside the reach of sundown, the twilight full of cars and sirens. It’s already dusk going hard into darkness, the night all in my eyes. Again I sit with my back to the west, watching the world swallowed whole by its shadow. Again I let the song slip away, no longer fighting the tide of sky and stars. Back at the blank page and the empty words I offer. A strange feature of this stretch of the road, the fixture on the front porch writing in the dark.

I fill the hours with doubt and habit, I know how to work a wound. I know how to lose but I still get sore. I pace the void and double down on the distraction, the nights only getting longer as the lonesome becomes the life. The ache the stake driven clean through, a tell unto the done. Still the years keep at it. There’s always something left to come undone.

The coffee is cold by the time Orion shows up. The cup always forgotten somewhere between hands and thoughts, the lighter you’re always looking for, the knife you always find. Words that follow the tapping of the signal. Words formed from a twiddling of thumbs. Face lit by the ersatz page as you drizzle as iffed ink. Marked as certain as a star, this absence always there. An oddity along the way, a light that’s alway on.