These days

These days

Fear of life 

Scares the death out of me

-

Mementos of the past

Like epigraphs 

Foreshadowing the end 

Of this chapter

I can no longer read the room. 

For its commands

Are scribbled on the back of napkins 

Discarded

From trying to clean up the mess

Yesterday made

We are in morning

Praying for the sun to rise again

Someone catches the holy ghost from the back of the dark room,

so sure we’ll be basking

In his light at any moment 

like she was there

When God took his first look at a blank slate.

These days, confidence favors

Ignorance’s secret love child

Conflicting facts never make it past the epidermis of this echo chamber

Assurance reverberates from the core

And names itself the truth

Then lies with sleeping dogs.

And dares us to wake him.

I’m trying to tell you

Everyday it feels like I’m waiting for the ground to gain its sense of self respect

Tired of carrying the weight 

Of a world that refuses to pick up its damn feet when it walks. 

Fear has been replaced with tiredness

For my fear of falling has been replaced

With my readiness to rest my head 

Wherever the bottom

Of this body sits.

Just let me close my eyes on the way down 

I’ve never pretended to live for the journey. 

Each page of every book I read has a number

Every run has a mile

Every body has a count

So I love like

The proctor’s gonna come and tell me time’s up.

I live like this all has got to be a test

To be amounting to something

But I’m starting to sense

The story got ahead of itself

And the spine asked us to make room 

For these pages 

But scoliosis is the only thing

That binds.

What do you do when you have nothing left to offer.

We will be the ones on the collection plate.

When the time is up.