Having spent the bulk of the day pretending to be someone I’m not, I think about what love could possibly mean in a world as fucked up as this one, slide the key into the ignition and make my way home.
I pass the kids playing basketball on the courts near the baseball fields which stretch out along the road next to the tall apartment buildings with their white painted balconies.
I’m driving into the setting sun, flinching in the raging orange glare, in search of meaning in the patterns which have become the blueprint of my life. Time has moved so quickly while standing still.
There is a noise that distance makes. There is a rustling, a sifting sound of discontent that grates in the veins, reminding you of what you could have been if only you had done things differently.
The melancholy static of phantom pain, the ghost of a life at the sides of your breathing. And is it a mirror we find ourselves in, is it a window through which we find our faces reflected in the midnight snow.
The poets dream, it is our most cherished and distorted obsession. It becomes sustenance, somewhere as we emerge from innocence, it becomes blood.
By the time I’m home the evening light is fading and gorgeous, glinting along a single silk thread swinging loose from a spider web which straddles the electric wires outside my window.
In the privacy, in the silence, everything I held back so tightly for hours on end becomes unraveled from around my little aching bones.
There is smoke in the night air against my lips.
Falling leaves.
A faintly veined fragility in everything.
.
Photo by Thirteen J
Allison Marie Conway 
Nice blog
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much ❤
LikeLike
Beautiful. And beautifully spoken. Keenly felt. “There is a noise that distance makes. There is a rustling, a sifting sound of discontent that grates in the veins, reminding you of what you could have been if only you had done things differently.”
There is a noise that distance makes. As if time could not bear to simply pass unnoticed, but must selfishly scratch its being on your skin, carve itself into your bones. Selfish prick. This physical self does not wear well as it is. But to drag this soul through worse–through angry scaly days, longing for the distance to end, for time to bid a sweet reprieve. To hold. Be held. To listen with more than my ears. To hear with my skin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your words here are poetry, my dear George. You have eyes inside of your emotions, nerve endings everywhere, I feel it as desperately as I feel my own when you express your inner longings and aches. “To hear with my skin.” … have you any idea how brutally gorgeous a thing to say that is? That it causes a physical, visceral reaction in my own body? I am in awe of your sensibilities… it is the rarest of things and I simply love to hear you speak about your experiences … I can’t help but feel seen myself, as I come to see you. Perhaps there is a cloth or a fabric or a pattern or a frequency that the truly poetic creatures share, across time, space, atmosphere .. there is something woven in us that only we can identify in each other. Feels a bit like a miracle when we do, I don’t know if that makes sense, if I am saying it correctly. Please just know you are such a gift, and an entire spectrum of darkness and light.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It makes perfect sense, Allison. I could not have said it better. Or clearer. I treasure this fabric, all its textures and rich and gentle colors, and the waves of light and sound that weave it together. I am so grateful that you are there, and that you find so much in me to nurture and touch and relate to. I cannot tell you how much that means to me. And of course, as I’m sure you noticed, my ramblings in response to you were the seeds of “Your Voice.” Once again, it wasn’t enough to just share a response to you–it had to grow into a verse of its own. Thank you as ever for your endless inspiration, my dear Allison.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am so grateful you are there, too. Treasure is the word that comes to my mind. In a very very noisy world, the quench of tranquility, thoughtfulness, insight, imaginings..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on The Reluctant Poet.
LikeLike