Don’t mind me, I’m in the middle of the map I’m making. It’s no bother, it’s all I ever do. I blow some smoke, I look around, I fill in a few blanks. Look out, world, next to nothing coming through. Sure it seems a horror show, but it’s good work for a monster. Distance painted on, black crow calling and coffee spilling steam. Here and there because the algorithm got sloppy, ice cream truck and crow throat, the haze and the hurting. The cursor and the curse, the music that was playing then the music playing now. Smoke clinging to every flesh, smoke hunkering deep in the heart. A few simple words, the tread of flies.
The music plays, a different song from distant days. The colors have all but gone. Something moves, something glimmers, some cold dead thing comes straight at you out the crypt. The wild, tired dead skies just stare back. The blind dog comes staggering into your shins. I can feel your deft alarm somewhere along the roots and lines. Your birthright bones and your scattered seeds. Your shine in the eyes of blood and death. It is a kind of dreaming, that boyfriend song now, all worm and plow. Now I am the empty night, the burned horizon. The scratching out scraps and habits from the ruins of a lost civilization, the collapse evident in everything.
The story is there was no story, just an old guy smoking on the porch. These gifted regrets that keep on giving. A mistake to match the set, and then another. So much reckless want and baseless fantasy. Witless and word proof, an automaton wound tight and now spinning out the springs, a set of wishes left out in the weather to rust. Hanging hopes in the wake of a wonder, a ghost caught in its own story wanting wildly. So I smoke and listen, the wailing train and the idling traffic, the kick of the neighbors air conditioner, and a faraway crow. Covered in ash and indicators, the wind of old ways blowing through me.