Inking Life

Finally, life is life. Undreamt vignettes find impersonal rest. It's the realized jargon that refuses to be relegated to peace. Moments of slanted light threaten to end it all – a perfect shattering. In the warmth that requires a witness, there is you. Always you.

There's a refusal to claim the love-note tucked in the pocket of the secondhand shirt I bought awhile back. I unbutton it just the same, revealing stars on the shoulders that deny maps and the lonely inksters who hideaway to draw them. Yet the note exists and so do we.

In winter's night, the house frame crackles and snaps. A pretend reason for staying awake might have something to do with destiny or some other mythological foray into what is not. A more transparent genesis is a what-if fear of one's own naked behavior. Bare trees scraping the black sky creak out hollow advice: swallow the silence pill. It seems to be best for everyone.

The moon-drifter heads back to bed; there is nothing beyond the dreams teasing in the dark. There is nothing in the space between ache and satisfaction. There is nothing more than life's unfolding with or without you.

Twenty sentences remain too many, yet a presence left for tending. How grateful I am for any who help with the gardening of every season that must nourish and destroy. In the end that has no beginning, life is life – a growth I no longer need to fear.