Above the scent of freshly dug earth beneath the mud-stained autumn sky.
Right is wrong and no decision matters.
She passes the day as the day passes by, nothing better than clean air in your lungs.
Like the fleeting ecstasy of sliding your toe into a frozen summer lake the first day of July.
There’s a deeper beauty behind the careening of the violin’s bow.
Horsehair grudgingly scrapes against nylon, ever echoing its sorrows.
Worse–they only hear the music.
For just an instance, she remembers what it was to be.
Without knowing, what it is or what it was, she longs for it more than anything she’s known before.
Resting your eyes–just for a minute–in the warmth of your departed lover’s lap as your childhood puppy comes to kiss you goodnight with his fowl, dog-stink breath.
For just. one. moment.
From somewhere crunches crunch about outside the window sill.
Close enough to awkward footsteps after the first snowfall.
Like the footsteps that will follow after, if it ever really began.
At the end of the line, all that lingers is your story and how it was told.
Of your genius and missteps, your melodies and lullabies.
As if she’s trapped in a dream of herself.
Tasting the tapestry of her life as the spindle’s width thins.
When the lights rise and the orator takes the stage, the audience watches on eager for something new.
Be it a timeless tale or rhymes of unorthodoxy, anything to keep their entertainment until their entertainment runs out.
The next time your fingers graze your face
–not the show you dress for the patrician and pedestrian alike, but for you, your clean face–
brushing your hair aside like lost, careless threads, you’ll wonder as I will:
will you make your poem one worth telling?