The day relayed its attitude in tilt and rotation, fiery chariot across the blue, dreaming revenant aglow in the black. The dust is stirred by wind and wings, the earth turning and turned, the way so worn and wasted. I took the steps, I said the words, I filled the vessel with intent so as not to waste it. No message, no meaning. Just the flex of flesh and respiration, the shambles of the animal as it moves around. The sun so warm, the moon so lovely, the witness so what.

It comes down to walls and windows, a door with a peephole, a gate locked up tight. It comes down to the hours of books and screens, the staring at the ceiling, the wishing on the stars. The heart’s long diaspora answered by the tumult of a hard earned hell, it empties slowly of all but exhausted blood and ache. The world is big, the world is wild, but the world wants what it wants. You never know all that it wants, but given time, you know that it isn’t you. All the rest is yearbook notes and horoscopes, and the brutal race to the bottom.

Time is running out, and yet it still manages to fill my schedule. My time is up, but there’s no telling how much down there’s left to go. The motions move through me, the dancing of a marionette, the worm to the spade. The words left wanting filling in the litany of blanks. The shape of things, the shape of the saying, the pressure light takes to push a shadow out. It’s like a calendar, it’s like a clock. An impression of a passage made from light and paper. A moment folded to show where the absence was. An arrow to show the direction of the loss.