when she walks she sees too much. faces in the traffic. dim and blurred. distant lives happening in blunt jabs and delicate cuts. all of us travellers. going nowhere.
it was quiet. the words lingered in midnight's tired council. all the short stories. all the nervous verses. just a series of people turned inside out.
when she walks she is not there. her reality is suspended. the world continues passed. in all its mollified glory. lives like sour candies slowly melting on time's venomous tongue.
she doesn't have stories to tell. though a few have told her.
she doesn't remember exactly when everything changed. she just knows that it did. there wasn't a catastrophe. or any kind of war. one day she just woke up and everything was different. the floor was missing. the ceiling was gone. nothing to blame. no enemy to rail against. just the hum of idling engines. just the traffic. the faint flicker of dimming lives against the stiffening thunder of progress.
the wounds. all the temporary bandages we use to cover them. we're thieves. we're merchants. we skillfully negotiate skin and bone, but distance requires more finesse.
fussing with our wrinkled maps. the quiet fury of the places we've been. the empty rage of those that no longer exist. footsteps. that take us. nowhere to go. but it still finds us.
she consulted her detours. she shuffled the usual bones. everything had changed except her.
it's just a voice she lamented. the ambivalent providence of conscience and regret. a quiet inferno of intimate choices and casual consequence.
the road is closed. the distance is spent.