the old robes

The stories have a way they go. Only wish on the nearest star. Only walk on troubled waters. The legends and the lore reach up through the roots of tongue and breath. We are riddled with these words and ghosts, the presence of our flesh carried upon this continuity of blood and breath, life both the raft and the sinking ship. There’s always one more drop in the ocean. There’s always more fish in the sea. I still wonder how you wear it. I still wonder what you’d say.

Here the hunger is just another sin of omission. Here the words cling to the carbon bonds. The echoes along the coursing shadows, the ringing around the ears. From urgent to inert, the shift in being from bound to break, memory sinking into the dark mythology nested in the organism. The crumpled fragments of some brief impression, a flash of flowers, a blur of feathers. Something I would tell you if we still had things to tell. Something that’d only mean more rope if things still meant.

Swaddled in some cheap polymer, some processed floss and tangled weave, I no longer grieve the undead. The passage of small time has done its prunings, though the entity still exasperates effortlessly. The lingerings of deep time coil and reach, tendrils tight around every fiber of flesh and bone, the direction implicit in the strata and the artifacts. Wrapped in entropy and hardened habit, my hands fumble in the unreliable pockets, my head hidden in the hood. I wear these rags past worn out, swarmed by the growing legions of holes and an alarum of use by dates, the only numbers the drag of the clock and the old one two. I still wear the wonder. I still hear your voice.