It was a simple melody. Beautiful. Melancholy.
She played the flute, as we rested on the trail.
The world was gone, but not all had yet burned.
A line of notes. They moved me. They chilled me.
Such a thing could show what people could make.
What glories that rivaled the stars in our broken hearts.
Northern forests, probably over the border, still green.
The world was gone because our ugliness wins in the end.
I watched her play that tune, and wept for what could have been.
I sit in a swing in a public park, middle of the night.
The stars, even in the country, still are too, too few.
I swing back and forth, trying to touch the sky above,
all the same.
A simple pleasure, my favorite thing as a young child.
Always trying to reach the sky, to leave Earth, to fly.
The rising and falling of my stomach as I reached higher,
too close to the sun.
Older, just coming out of a partiers haze, looking for,
something innocent and pure, to make me whole again.
I swing back and forth, the stars I know are in reach now,
too close to the Earth.
It’s not like it was when we were young.
There is no thought of redemption or escape.
There is no music. Just the hum of the road.
It’s early morning. Soft blue light.
She’s wearing that purple velvet shirt.
It still fits her. The morning is her crown.
Just up the road to Murfreesboro. A day trip.
So she can see the VA. So she can, maybe, hold on.
The war is over for her. She never talks about it.
She sits without a seatbelt, head against the window.
The road seems endless, even on this short trip.
We don’t talk. I love her. I want to connect with her.
We pull of an interstate exit, go to a chain fast food joint.
We get sodas, popping, and ice crashing like glaciers.
There is no where to escape too, even if we drove forever.
It’s morning. I awake just as the sun does.
The soft dawn shining through my window.
I feel empty. I am without energy. Just let me sleep.
I get up. I barely push through the motions.
Shower. Dress. Eat.
I am a ghost in my own life. Just let me sleep.
The job stresses me. Never catching up. Too much.
Try to smile and act normal with everyone.
Don’t let them know. Don’t let them see.
Scroll on my phone in bed at night.
Listen to songs that can’t make me feel anymore.
Lay in the dark, dreading tomorrow, every day after.
Just let me sleep. But don’t let me wake up.
Young women, especially cocktail waitresses, with southern accents have always been a comfort to me.
Tennessee never felt like home, just the place I found myself pushed from the womb, and it was nothing to me.
The bar is hopping on a Saturday, and she brings me my drink, gives me a smile, and I just look away.
The sweet words they give easily, the soft drawl of those words, reminds me I build worlds that never were.
Comfort in an accent of someplace I’ve run from my whole life, and the young women never were for me.
Just pay the bill and drive until morning, to whatever magic can be gleaned from starlit highways, and sad songs.
Late night. Sleepless. Rain on the window.
Peace and rest, in this life I will never know.
Dream and dream, all the places of my fears.
Dream and dream, as I’ve wasted all my years.
I don’t dream of women or sex, but empty space.
High contrast of star lit sky, and tears on her face.
Snow might fall soon, and Paris will crumble away.
Her and I will again be children, innocent, at play.
The thunderclouds block out the stars this night.
There is Satan, drinking sodas in a car all white.
She sleeps in another room, and I’m glad for distance.
I cannot hope for the words to conjure in this instance.
Simple pleasure. My phone. Earbuds. Sad music about the fall of the angels.
The city far, far away from me. Only the stars above me. Where angels dwell.
Death creeps ever closer to us. The end of all we’ve built. All our comforts.
The music moves through me. The stars humble me. The fears haunt me.
I lay in the cool grass of the meadow. The stars are as close as I want them.
We’re blowing it. Humanity to stupid to save itself. The angels always silent.
It rains in the evening, after a whole day of sweltering heat.
I sit in my car, mute, still, listening to music of pulsing beat.
The words don’t matter, just romantic crap anyhow, so cruel.
The rain can hide my face from God, that is an unbroken rule.
The car is running, so is the air conditioning, cold soothes me.
I knew a mermaid as a boy, she was mercurial, absolutely free.
She kissed my cheek, before splashing and swimming back home.
They were hunted to extinction by the holy men, the heart of Rome.
So much time wasted on sex and romance, when it corrupts us all.
The futures people throw away, the hurt they do, for pleasure of it all.
If I made a perfect line that captured her soul, and not accidental skin,
then I would break away forever from this broken world, and my sin.
The road goes on, but really goes nowhere.
It’s all the same loss and death and sickness.
The world trembles with madness, anywhere.
The radio plays the same songs all night, every night.
I used to dream of running away to some bright city.
I thought all the dreams and magic and love were there.
I used to dream I’d find the place I belonged out there.
But it’s all the same in towns and in cities, no one waits.
The night and the dark is soothing, up early to dream.
There is stall a place in my mind to go, to find paradise.
My first love can still be conjured their, and her kiss.
The night when all was well, and I know a perfect peaqce.
The shopping center was a harsh brightness in the night.
Closed until the morning, everything was still all lit up.
She sat on the scrub covered hill, looking down on it.
The subdivisions sprawled out in spokes in every direction.
Everywhere fast food chains and shopping chains.
Chains that held her, naturally an angel, close to ground.
Fae that had lived in these hills before greed swallowed them,
were now forever out of sight, and unfeelable to human kind.
But once, their queen had come to her in the night, touched her face.
The garish light of the shopping centers and subdivisions and chains
even blotted out the stars in the sky above, the reminder to humans
of how small they really were, a blue speck with only death around it.
She thought of the words that only came with difficulty, that she would
right in the dark and quiet early morning, just her and her lamp and notebook,
writing what dregs of magic she could still call, as she was naturally an angel.
