Memorium

Breath is drawn,

The archer pulls back the bow to release the arrow,

It’s trajectory has become powerless to its intent.

It is raw. It is questionable. It is all happening before your very eyes.

Along licks of fire, some will dance.

Simple and poised movements, an antonym for the rigid blindness that blisters fingertips.

Did they swallow what was left of the air?

It is dim, and perilously pressed into my spine.

I shiver beneath it’s weight, and am frightened to follow it home.

Every sound, and the world is suspended again.

It will hide beneath my bed with poems long forgotten, missing socks, and collections of dust that scream out in the night.

Each figure relaxes and tenses over and over again, the same ragged breath drawn then shakily exhaled out.

You cannot escape yourself, you cannot promise anything that doesn’t bleed with irreverent disappointment.

Each falling drop a caution, each a pinprick of doubt.

One more step and the recital will cease,

but music still sways uneasy turmoil that mocks and beckons our unfamiliar selves.

People we were, thousands, line up to move in present place, they beg for their turn under the spotlight.

It is a prison to be inside of myself, I think.

To be so helpless in primal want and suffering, baring teeth to ward off the predatory nature of life.

We have constructed our own tombs, closed our own coffin lids, and waited in blissful agony for generations.

A notion of what could be, petrified in amber with mosquitos and creatures from a time before,

held hostage on a hostile shelf amongst letters not opened, and impending regret.

Sit still, sit still,

this is it.

The tightrope has snapped and the performer free falls hundreds of feet in an unexpected turn of events.

It’s trajectory has become powerless to its intent.

It is raw. It is questionable. It is all happening before your very eyes.