There’s always tomorrow I say, only having ever known today and the vast, vanishing past. I crawl out of bed before I’m finished sleeping, I don’t get started until I’m through. Time is always talking trash behind my back, laughing like god at the plans I never bother making. All dread and drama and misplaced commas. All supply and demand and mapped out last stands. I lose a little, I gain some pain, the sun it comes and goes. Sometimes I make out the constellations as I miss your kiss. I trip over something in the dark like I was made for this.
Everything’s connected she says as it all falls apart. Nothing has changed she says as nothing is ever the same again. Them’s the breaks, them’s the rules, the crumbling cookie, the tumbling dice. I never had the jump, I only had the reflexes. I never had the answers, I only had the words. The shadows stretch, the night unfurls, I leave the porch light on. The gate is locked, the doors are shut, the dogs work their way around every corner. The music plays and I sing along, even though there’s no words to the song. Yesterday is always playing tomorrow never comes.
Look, I know I’m nothing special: a scratchy track on a garage sale album. An unsigned handprint in the cracked cement. Bills to pay and miles to go, the stillness of a hidden lake, the ravages of a rough road. A sight to see, a box to check, a letter never read again. I collect scabs and scars and bone deep aches, an awkward limp, a pain in the neck. A quote that they misremember as they lift my style like sifted strata, like a crime scene pealed off finger print. A plate excavated in pieces. A song only remembered by a line or two, the singing long gone still lingering, somewhere all those tomorrows ago.
