Say My Name

We open and we close, in tandem. Tempting, seducing, coercing. We manipulate, distort, disrupt. We kiss, we fight, we make up. You think I’m scattered and I don’t think you understand me in my deepest places, my intricacies, my mechanical inter-workings. I don’t think it is important to you, either. But I’m wrong about a lot of things and you say love and they say love and we all say love and turn the keys in the ignition at the start of just another day, another day, another day. Sometimes you are distant, and sometimes it’s me. But there is intention behind your eyes as you bring me my coffee in a porcelain cup. The one with the faded roses and gold around its rim. It is delicate and charming, and my skittishness eases up. Have you any idea how long a writer simply stares off into the distance, penning not a single word because none belong? It is not easy. We search, mine, dig dead things up. It has all been said before, by someone else, only better. Sunday morning. Winter so cold you can taste it in your mouth as your toes sting like ice and your eyes scan the whiteness of the stoic sky. An unfeeling frost. There is a scent in the air when the seasons click but you have to be very attentive to notice it. It is undeniable, it is the scent of smoke and all of nature passing into the underworld. The breath of a thing which is leaving you. On the streets the sound of church bells, and the scratching of the huddled crowds. A man without a home drinks from a bottle in a brown paper bag. He curses and smiles and has nothing. I think of you more often than I say because the world is a gray tombstone place and my heart is a soft patch of earth. How many tiny thoughts drift away never to return. It’s sad to me that we just let them go. That there are some things which cannot be captured, cannot be observed. A single small bird flutters up against the window and as I watch him rustling leaves, I fill with a melancholy blue which I secretly hope lasts all day. A day of silence, day of rest, a day without center. Beginning, middle, end, falling as would sand, infinite grains into and into and into one another. This is how I sink back into you. I am distracted with your image, your pieces, your movements, your words like rosary beads I slide over and over again through my fingers. Hard little pearls you once held stiff around my neck, Now I will touch you and you will be still.