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You slip along a thousand paths, head stitched heavens, and hell scathed steps. The sticking of the constellations, the scripture of the stars, words braided through the chemistry and sigils leavening the blood. Heir to the endless explanations, antecedent to a few certain dooms. It started all over, it can end that way too. If you knew now what you knew then maybe you would have a friend. If I knew then what I know now I probably wouldn’t have stuck around. 

But here I am and there I go. Aching for the exorcism, bare handed and waiting for the bell. The night consumes what the light eludes, the feast of flesh and the prim pell-mell. Weighing in with your observation, changing the world with your gaze. The point of view or the velocity, the empty intersection and the blinking red. I need a map for all the memories, a meteor for every slippery wish. I slump over the screen with the door wide open. I fall asleep with the lights still on. It all adds up when your number is too. If you do the math you only know where you aren’t.

I wander through the misspent kisses. I linger on the never known. Breathless stares and bare intentions. These winters with only the keening and the palpable absence. These years thrown out into the yard with the dogs and bones. Counting down in half-lives and doomsdays, in answered wishes and brash commands. The cold wind reaches  through the window, the songs pay their respects. The ache remains in these small rooms and this lonesome bed. The ache remains out where the fire has burned out and the night makes declamations in unseen animals and slews of stars. All that is missed and all that was squandered. All that’s entailed in the changing of the tense.