The smoke doesn’t get too far before it gets settled, it curls it coils it drifts it handwrites epitaphs, and it unravels all at once. It doesn’t take much of the old huff and puff, home is already blown over, just a tickle of the ember sets the flag unfurling. Just a notion of a drag and here come the clouds of the conflagration. The light leans in, the sun caught in the pines slips through the haze to find my eyes. It goes on, with spark and breeze, sparrow and crow and all the physical ephemerals. I sit and smoke, dull and old and aching. Other words that occur may apply.
I pour another cup of coffee, squinting as the sun gets snippy, the sky a scraping away of sight. Tumbles of smoke and glitters of wings flash through the periphery, visible things the failing flesh can still catch in passing, like a held gaze or blown kiss. I look down, there’s a conspiracy of filth and feet. I look down, there’s wavering symbols in ersatz ink and make believe paper. The words do their thing, grabbing whole hunks of consciousness from the minds cast across them, plug and play where neither blood nor ghost get their way. The words do their thing, I mind my place. Any knot that can come undone will come undone.
The world walks through us, though it can seem so far away. The magic of the muddle abounds. Greasepaint to roar the caveats implore the flesh to feed the fire, those marked exits you never notice until they’re missed, the actions fed naked to the frame. A place to sit, a song to mutter, something to look at. The words left to stanch a mortal wound, the days left adrift in this mortal most, scenes taken from the wash of weather and persistent irrelevant longings. The tint it takes, awash in sad eyes and last light. The way all take away, the will unwound.