It’s the beating wings of the butterfly that dreamed it was a poet, it’s the one crushed flower right outside the time machine, the incident and its attendant ripples reaching out through the world. These plumes of smoke, this tide of sky spilling down, the dopplered song of the unyielding train washing over brick and asphalt. The heat that lingers in the tarmac, the albedo bouncing the wavelength back to the stars. You move one piece, every piece feels it. One person falls, the world is lessened in ways both obvious and unnoticed. Everything covered in fingerprints, everything spewing consequence. The ice cream truck plays itself off, everyone singing along.
Star stricken I stir it around, the moon full in abundant beauty. From the day before to this last let down, I descend again. The dust and grime in double time, silverfish scatter as ants reform their ranks, where there once were structures now space and debris. The wounds grow worse as the hours grow shorter, the night wanders on without. Here today, gone tomorrow. Life’s like that goes the recipe. Oh, impoverishment amid all this plenty. The fallow fields, the fecund moon.
So it’s another cup of coffee. So it’s one more sunset as it comes undone. The winds on high, the stars out of focus. This flung stone unskipped, forgotten but for the ripples. Mementos and tenders, letters folded with the dust. Bit and cut and full of splinters, nothing certain but more and worse to come, I sing and hum along. The night is full of stolen voices, car doors slam and race away. The chimes chatter and the houses blink and stare, the rats in the attic and the cat on the roof. My heart gets broke one last time, and all these empty words are the collateral. The price always paid twice, never for the better.
