smoke

The day slows as dusk drawls closer, the trees swaying in the breeze, the shadows filling in the streets. Waiting is about all left of me, eyes pressed soft against the scenery, noting the passing of car and crow. The cool air already replacing the daily repast of fever in the firmament, the thirsty flora droop and drowse, one thing then the other on repeat. The cigar I’m working at unspools in fumes and trickles, sending signals to the sky. Nothing gained and venture free, my temporary trails away after heaven’s heels. The sun hits its highlight reel as it ducks out without a word.

We stick to the script, we go with the story. The words pulled up still cool from the well, spilled as we trudge along the trail. The world only another word for human frippery, the world we mean typically more glib than globe. These prefabricated dreams that hold us to the proof of our promises, these words that stitch us tongue first to these wildfires our lies spread through every stick and stone. Ground down by time and toil, turned to ghost and soil through the grit and grease of it, I lose traction with our tribe as I am unspooled across the landscape of dust and dirt. Burning through the breathing, smudged across the stars.

The night swallowed us like it always does, first bit by bit then all at once. I sit and smoke and slowly turn to earth. The front step with its moths and spiders, Jupiter glinting from a tree limb silhouette, the sky abiding all my gossip and glares. I’ve let go of a few last graspings, the attachments to notions of seeing and being seen, like these longings left for lost lovers and restrangered friends and other worlds never to be seen again. It is a sad and lonely passing, this skin so ephemeral and dream tangled that I leave it here in this ersatz ink, these bones so heavy with resignation. I speak aloud and the breath leaves my body, all I’ve ever said or done the smoke of fires extinguished before I was born.