A Scarlet Decoy

Wrapped in-between shades of two different migraines - I left the pub on a careless night. Outside its warm glow - a fragile ego, churning second thoughts into wine. A luminaire show among the lampposts for the vacant streets to guide the way home.

I keep my blue notes buried in my coat where prying eyes would never find. I wished that same truth would take a shared view and apply to the questions floating through the wine. The rainfall whipped me, along with the trees, and felled nearly all their leaves. Rippling wind bit, but never got the best of me. I sink with my lows, but what do I know? They oscillate between the peaks.

I watched the people flow out the front door, hopefully, all with somewhere to go. I made the mistake of thinking they weren’t like me, pretend royalty, navigating the victimless domains in their head. Fools, all the same, no higher kings than the cats roaming the silhouette's blurred edge.

An empty show tune, a turned-down party, another habit I will not refuse. I feign complex views as a nouveau attitude, but their substance always slipped across the edge of my tongue. I’m bad with people - I can’t complain though. I need to be missing on a familiar street. I think they need me, a pet controversy, a spectacle for low light nights.

I could pretend to keep my head glued and scuttle my vagrant truth, but my actions respond in kind. Their faces were torn to some hollow virtue, sorry that closed eyes won’t keep them dry. I'd tell those poor souls, throw out your control. Careless is careful, like shattering windows for a better view. Glass falls through the cracks in the sidewalk anyways.

Flooded street lights always shed their wet lines to become something new for me, drawn comfort from small things, a notion I half-believe like an ephemeral creed that sinks into a mirrored well.

Another bus closed in quickly with the same chance of soaking me to my bones. I sidestepped clumsy while it passed me and spun around in a whirlwind blur. A shower followed by sopping my coat, I made company with the breeze.

I wrung them out full, the wool and my bones, a watery outro from the last stop of the night that kept my blue notes dry. The driver stopped me and ruptured candidly to the hum of performative apathy. I wasn’t guilty, but I let my nerves speak. I preferred when ships in the night were out to sea.

Along the front row of crumbled asphalt, the journey was as undone as the unsaid letters scrambled when I looked to the empty sky. Cruel words take their payment underneath my eyes. The same tired lines, but they got through. The purple circles are where they hide, friends with muddled queues and clandestine lies, too far from home so they would come into mine. Or the pub too.

I dropped my guard to pass the time. Perfect pavement never sat right, its splinters tell the story, it never lies. I missed so much time I missed the divergence between the streets. The light caught the pillars in the sky, so I tried to find mine as if I had to. Climbing curbs for perspective to picture a new point of view was an offer too inviting to decline.

I stumbled straight through the lip's edge near a red light, a tired sign, but my body couldn’t catch up to my head. Blood hit the mangle of mud and vine. Lost in the petals - the newest victims of second-hand sorrows, crushed geraniums littered the ground. I tore my jacket and spilled my blue notes so I could get to those flowers in time. My head bled through its new ribbons. I dragged my knees up and crawled to make things right.

I cradled chutes between my sleeves, searching for a pardon from my clumsiness’ greed, their wilted breaks showed me none. I pulled them close and watered them with my eyes, no choice of mine. I apologized because I had to.

I clutched their roots close, I clamped my bloody nose, I pulled my ripped coat to carry on. I couldn’t bleed here; too much shame veered to block that river on my cheek. The pavement ended, familiar fanfare greeted me with delight, finally somewhere I knew home to be.

Wrapped in-between two different meanings and a buckling mast, I nailed the colors on a careful night. Outside my front door - a personal war, fell scarlet drops the color of my wine. Green roots with me, an honest menagerie remade the pavement where I stood. The assured fresh mark left by a true story I don’t have to speak.