Dissolution

Ever wonder where you’d be if you weren’t afraid to cause? A path spreads before me but the traffic never stops. When the bucket of pain starts spilling, the chicken doesn’t cross. I’m so tired of losing sleep, but I’m at a loss over how to fall again. Forwards I think I’m travelling, but my feet only lead from park back to room. Purple patches splash below my eyes; all too awake I lie and lie, staring dead into your iris, some unwise compensation. We can’t take part without taking each other apart, and guilt lodges like catarrh. A taste of mercury lingers. It all spreads, like a knife over burnt bread. What an unhappy medium. Now, as though assigned from above and specially sliced for the second I step off the curb, here’s a pang of something. You and I, we’re like sword and word. Dot that ‘i’, cross that traumatic number off the list. Haggling over semantics, unions become confederations become commonwealths. Patches are receipted, bills woven. My house became a sandcastle. Under the desk there’s that nuclear briefcase, tempting sweaty fingers. As soon as I lifted them, my castle was swiped. That genius is solely for malevolence; we’re all sick of it, sick from it. Peace resides on a high wire, a fine line. Another ramble, deep gasp, follow the carrion crow. Take its name as mantra, imagine it watching and narrating this little life. So much passed between us, is still passing. Tender swirl of wind, breath emerging; and I see, for the first time, the leaf in process of leaving, a tiny parachute. They come and go, the rainbow trout below, but there’s nothing quite like the swell of pure words to get me flowing in the morning. They crack, they ooze, they run. I’m just a glint of face on a spoon, held by someone else. The moon tentatively dishes what little light falls on it. “Those shadows on the wall still look good together”. One of us stubs the flame into that cement nook between bricks. Those words don’t move me like they used to: they’re just moves now. I’ve still got the knight, I think, willing myself to steal, to rebuild. My heart was in my mouth, now it’s where your heart is. Cobbled together, I hobble on, moving to where? Slowly we’ve shifted into being more content, joining everything else; but oh, how we lose ourselves within it, streaming along it, sinking into mattresses, blanketed in certain time.