For so long I folded into myself trying to make a shape of a swan. Most I could progress ended up going through the wash in the pocket of my old jeans like the history of Japan. Just a bunch of flaking parchment plaster stained with the bleeding ink of existence. I was folding so much not to be meek anymore, more than a voice, wanting to be seen. I screamed whispers and the audible echos melded with the wind.
The thoughts I churned in bed had already been tossed by everybody else. I was so selfish, I never wanted anything for myself. Apathy and woe crinkled. I tried to give faux love to all the pretty girls, but they only mattered brief swoons.
I have an old copper tub and the bottom has broken at the seams. Spots of the inside have oxidized patina splots like a map I never traveled. It rests stagnant in a corner near some Red Wing crocks and old whisky jugs whose brittle corks have fallen through.
Tonight, the cold air has hushed the crickets, and grounded the moths that hovered around the streetlights in summer. The air has a cool, clean breath effect that bounces sound. I’m quiet with the vast effect and look to the clouds and try to see the stars behind. I surf a memory on the gray.
All that didn’t wash or sink hid in the abyss of the meaning I could not comprehend, they rested like flat tires under the bent fenders of old cruiser bikes in a junkyard that never dreams. Hope is a different story. Hope is a story of unfolding and starting over despite the creases everyone tries to ignore like the peripheral vision of a one eyed dog. Being flat together.
Without.
Cramping reverb emotion in existence becomes a tiresome task. Repressed anger and hiccups of lost loves thunders the soul, quakes it with a hollow longing for a life relived. Ever? Of course I know, loss is the meandering circle we spin on street corners and inside beer cans. Loss is the enemy of forget, for when we let go of our mistakes, we are prone to happen upon them again.
Upon a time tomorrow we can gear toward, even if it is uphill. Surpass the speed bumps and just arrive like you were already there. That’s what I want, a finished product, an exemplified being of repose. Just resting at the top exhausted in the rain, picturesque yawns that sound like sighs with a smile of success on my face, dragging the sorrow of the world behind me, ready to pull it over the summit. Just as it peaks and is ready to start momentum, I’ll cut the rope and let all the sorrow of the world roll away down into a place I’ll go later.