gazed

It’s right here, the moment looking you in the eye. It’s right now, the cunning around the curve. We sway and change and set our sights, we burn our hearts in effigy for the ones we began at the gone, watching the road and thinking about the next one while the one we’re done with chatters and navigates. You already know I miss your eyes, the crazy way I gazed at you. You knew how much I’d miss you before I was a glimmer in the eye. It’s been gone so long, it’s hard to know how hard the going has gone. I’ve been nothing for most of whole thing, ready forever for the bad I got coming. There’s no going back, there’s no going forward. Just the sound of now bumping away in the night.

It doesn’t wait, it doesn’t ask. It doesn’t explain things along the way. You sleep, you wake, you slip between aspects. The music rings out and sends the mind a reeling. The music rings out and a body might like to weep. So isolated and readily disposed, a turn of phrase, a wish to a djinn. The devil shakes your hand and checks for fingers. The tide arrives as you empty out your breath. I bear the mark, I wear the mark.

The future is headed straight at us, and hindsight isn’t helping a lick. You are here forever distant and aloof as all the lights go out. The thunder rises from the gutter, rattling windows and shaking walls. It isn’t that you do not see me. The truth is you’ve seen me too much. Nothing left but vile repetitions. The flicker on a bedsheet as the film flutters off the reel. The story photographed between the scenes a string of emojis. Not even laughter left to cling to my husk. I have been extinguished, smolder though I may.