foolish symmetry

All the things I want to tell you all the deleted words they must go somewhere

chasing a foolish symmetry 

consistency will come later

every language is at least two

whirring bus wheels

the hiss of brakes

fraying

sepia streetlights make us a zoetrope

sleeping in each other's arms

I sleep less deeply 

yet I awaken refreshed

we only ever had the nights

warmer in the shadows

clouds are a bedspread

curling and uncurling in your hands

we only ever had the nights

the day so conquered

feathers in the breeze

rebar rusting in crumbling concrete

muffled laughter and a late lunch

nights are meant to be stolen

readings

I turn to you every night

my Book of Sand

lean close to feel your breath

to listen to the story of you

colder and warmer music lilting

while green-eyed cats knead the bedclothes 

birch-bark paper leaves 

strands of autumn red hair

bookmark pages I'll never see again

save the runes etched in my mind

in one of the thousand outcomes

where I'm found without you

Sculpting

The pain crept up from nowhere. It seized his mind like a toothache, a rotten tendril snaking up the synapses already worn raw by regret. He tried to ignore it. The clinking of his point chisel against the marble as he worked seem to stave off the worst of it. 

The sculpture was coming along slowly. The figure inside didn't seem to want to come out this time. He'd caught a glimpse of it, in the marble quarry, beckoning to him, and he had selected the stone. 

Even now, in the clouds of dust that swirled in the evening light, it breathed. 

The pain would get worse, he knew, once the figure was free. But then it might get better. He worked on, in the last of the light. 

THE END FOR NOW