The light wavers once you switch it on, maybe the lamp, maybe the surge protector you project. There is no amount of expertise you won’t flout for these scraps of conjecture. There is no amount of dread enough to slow the roll of your thinking. The little shops you seem so sure you visited before now direct you to the mall in the ziggurat, to be lost again in the foot traffic and the labyrinthine. Another moot point now that sleep has sped away. Another moot point, as it’s the only sort you make. You walk around the darkened house stepping over cats and dogs until you step in something unexpected, then you slowly blow your stack. Something to be expected from the unexpected, the bad penny and the butter side down. It goes around, and here it comes.
The piece you thought it would be has now departed, the brain storm setting off nerves and curses as the blood does its slow burn. The letters you long to write, the conversation you want to have, the words loved left unwanted in the silence that was always closer to her heart. Sore and bent and thirsty as a wanderer winds up, you clean the sick from the hallway and your foot, the wishing a small thing dwindling in the distance. The pain in one hip now shared with the other, the songs so sad once you think of the singer, the failed artist finding the sort of immortality that doesn’t do them any good now. Wavering between the myths and mistakes while her world burns as well. The lovelier, busier, more important of the two, but still something that you share besides moments you misunderstood and time she wanted wasted.
The forced light, the heavy heart, the pain that never leaves only ebbs and flows. Some song plays that you never want to hear again, some words that won’t leave you alone, the hard truth seldom settles long enough to look you in the eye. The way you want it, the one you miss, they were never there. Not for the troubles, not for the lonely, not for the long haul or the short steps either. They never claimed to be, never said it could be. This is you being you, dumb and stubborn and invulnerably enraged. Sad because this is the only story you fit, the only story you know, so you tell it again and again. The nail that only knows the hammer, the dog kicked once long ago and is now only savagery and teeth. Not the act but the way you took it, not what was said but what you learned to hear. The things she would never say, then all at once she went away. Everything before and after just the color that you paint in, never sure where the truth was severed, never knowing what the least utterance meant.