Some days don’t so much fade as fold, all at once curled up on its side head tucked towards tomorrow. The horizon bright on its side, like the gaze of a thrilled child ready to dream on to day, like the beaming mischief caught in the last glint or twinkle. The dusk of old fashioned clatter and the havoc of loose mutts. The done day settling down all around, the darkness reaching out, the train wails once then rattles on forever. You can read that how you want. You can call it like you like.
Me? I’m used to the wrong end of it. The leaned on laughed at aspect, the beating on repeat. The fear or the other, the blank place in the mirror. Words written as if in remedy, words choked down like alibi. I light a tree, I blend a breath. The wide open night closes in. There’s so little left to me it’s hard to tell quite where I am. A link in a chain, type in the stack, the strata after strata. The ashes twice, and then the fall. You can repatriate the punctuation. You can count the pops.
Shuffle for the numbers, cut for iteration. You wear it fresh in the wide eyed moment, you miss it as if hidden by a spell. Hands clasped empty, wrists crossed below the heart, if the heart yet is honest. Cold in song, cold in skin, the wandering past the winds. It sings out in rumble and in scurry, the motions that wave at us, the earth drawing down. It calls out at crossroads and gas stations, intersections under alien light, all left but to signify. The bygone ways that are gone once we let them go. Wisdom only what we can carry when we have to leave.