One night the skies clear a little, the breathing gets a bit easier, and the stars flicker in the slippery atmosphere. There’s not much to it, just a rolling of the dice and clipped fluidics, but it feels like a respite all the same. The troubles are loosed and they aren’t through acting up. The bad has just begun, but it’s good to take a breather while you can. So the stars are out and the smoke is on the road. The night is cool and it’s coming through the screen. It’s all the romance that’s allowed.
Sit back and let the light do all the work. Study the geography of shadow and ceiling, let the songs pass through unanswered. Raid the reliquary if you think it will help. Photographs and artifacts and all the shunned offerings left laying around. You can never tell where the power lingers. The static sticks to your fingers. The words wander all over your being. The night never cares if you can sleep.
All the gifts and all the good of it cheapened by fits and starts. The books you lent, the dishes you shared, the pen you rarely write with. The list is endless once you begin to catalogue the absence. The glass is overflowing once you let it pour. A wrong turn by a generous soul sets you to thinking, and the poison gets all over. Left with a set of intangibles and time on the wrong side of it, moving in small sad circles. Rent cloth and offered aspects, acts of contrition in shabby skins, the loud of living all around. Regrets gathered like flies to a wound. The hours abound.