repertoire

Before I rise I tease my feet, testing for the latest pain, rehearsing this stunt of standing up. Typically I get it on my first take. I’ve been at it for a while. I step and stumble, unhinged choreography to unheard music, the herky-jerky heel toe gone wrong a preview of spills to come. I am a bundle of coaxial cable, I am a bouquet of shames and haplessness. Here at the twilight of my usefulness, here on the long way down.

The tree is all a whisper with the shimmer and sway weaving through it, the day headed west and smoke loitering in the eaves. It doesn’t take much navigation to get from day to day. The earth does most of the work, your part is largely not falling off. It gets trickier as your pins go from stalwart oaks to rickety splints, but that’s the great thing about the earth, there’s no shortage of things to hold onto. A feather here, a wing there, something to witness as we dissolve and despair. The attachments outlast their bonds, reaching for the next breath.

So another day is done. So the night is on the rise, a tower staring down. Things are passing, lives are changing, younger folk walking different dogs staring at their phones. I wind down slow, watching my pieces go missing, watching the endless changing of the guard. Here and gone, was now not, the impoverished spirits of an imprudent soul dwindling into silence. Tricks and treats and folded ephemera, words gathering like dust. She loves me, she loves me not. How I do go on.