What is contained in motion? In separation? In the fluid trajectory of two cars
driving in different directions
when once they drove together in one, singular and twice
with music playing like a warm stove in Winter
watchful eyes glinting at the movement of her soapy shoulders
inhaling a song they both liked
was it really so long ago? time can be a fickle fellow
you believe things have not changed before
the car wreck distorting metal into specters, and then mangled see
all the signs and wonders leading to your loss
glaring and obvious as they were not before
I would say four years, six, maybe more
since like powdered sugar you shook her
out of your system and changed the channel
you think she couldn’t pick up on the dull flat key of your promises
or the way you did not meet her pleading eye
and had someone else nearby
parked with engine still running
waiting her eventual hot buttered turn
you were bound to return to the past
as your memory dissolved through gauze
that is all that remained sharp
like a knife on my chest will cut
only so deep and then retreive
sticky piecemeal
baking it into cakes and giving alms
when we are neither penitent nor dead
but live on
in seperation
as time comes and goes like a trance
one moment I am holding a glass
of your words
believing myself loved
the next the house is being emptied
sold for next family to inhabit, my footsteps
there was a time I held onto
boxes of memories like a kite
I saw if you let go of the string
they rose higher and higher out of sight
more beautiful for freedom
now I can pack the entirity of me
in one small bag and still have room for heartache
this is the season of change
the radio host warns us of impending rain
another storm like last year and the one before
we threw sharp glances at each other until there was no more
blood left inside to keep warm
I feel no regret, only the beckon of movement
on to the future and maybe
I will not need a car where I am heading
watching the horizon bleed
its first bidding autumn evening
and I remember laying with you watching tv
in the dark, the feel of your fingers on my neck
remember reading Bridges of Madison County, thinking
surely people do not live like that
and the car
waiting at the stoplights
long after they could have driven on
blinking in humid downpour
blinking for her to get out and run toward
something already buried and underground
I hear the gear shift
watch in rear mirror
the outline of you
grow gradually thinner
against orange light
and the sound of someone
crying out
TheFeatheredSleep 