Futile Litany

Watching the swans fall. Rapt in the descent. Feathers in my throat. Wings in my chest. White and remembering how black it was. Orphans with their hats off. Matchsticks under their thumbs.

I don't ever want to be old enough to say that it never mattered. That there's no reason left to write about them.

Deal me. Every hand tilted toward. Turn me over. I am a face card. The value dependent upon the game you're playing.

Swallowing the last of what the window let through tonight. Pale daggers in the silence stab.

But there's no blood anywhere.

No pain left to be had.

Just rigor mortis setting in to corpses older than the graves we've dug for them.