goner

It isn’t the faded flowers, the listing of the landscape, the letters left to dust. It isn’t the broken bones set wrong or the way the day has to break the bones of hope with nothing more than a slip of pale blue sky. It’s the taint of truth in each memory, the hindsight clarifying every smile and stammer. It’s the cruel tint to the lean of the language, each day waking to early to catch on late. The cherished moments damaged by the light they’ve landed in, forty years with the top of the charts singing in each wound. Fool-hearted and blindsided every time.

There’s no turning this tide, there’s no one coming back. The dark and the dawn, the stunned heavens and the forced concessions, the touch of yet another unseen sun. Wake to the depths of despair, dreams as unrelenting as the day, the grave untended and untold. The slow dissolve and the murmurs beneath the screen, the theater empties and the world has changed. Rain across a lonesome parking lot, parting together again and again, practice and play acting with the words left running.

I never had the numbers, it was never in the stars. Watching the parade pass in twos as the rain keeps coming. Watching the boats go sailing away waiting for my ship to come in. It’s just like the movies, things turn out one way or another. Most of the people we see we never see again, some exposition, some background talent. Not everyone makes it to the end, but it ends without waiting up for anyone. The lights left on, the lights turned off, the days come and go. I look at the clock, I look at the calendar. You’re not there either.