Habitual Skins

It's sad because if I wrote something beautiful an hour before no one will ever know. They'll wind up here. Dressed in the wind like orphans at the ocean's edge. Never knowing all that came before the force of the anchor in high tide. The boat cauterized to its moorings. Doomed to miss the hurricane. To watch the storm from a distance.

It's love because I say it is. Very much hating to use that word in anything I expect will be read. It is so because there are songs I can no longer tolerate alone. It is so because the world has forgotten, but I still dream it. And wake up with the hook in my throat. The hurricane in my skin.

Deaf to the future. Mute to the past. All I could do was draw them. As hopeless as any artist must be. Naming every stroke. Imaginigng the lightning could hear. Would listen to its own roar.

Wondering how I ever loved anyone.

Or if I ever would again.

The sky pretending to fall. To convince us we were getting closer.