throughout the black

possess anything you can find, but you’ll never really possess the mind,
placate the guilty, painful room.
some things hardly change: I go home uninvited, I leave uninvited,
days and weeks slip me like vapor trails,
I turn to shadows for acceptance.
the picture is settled: our tall, stony bodies, walking without us,
oblivious of what resides in their hands,
our connection, scratched out by its own aching edges,
oblivious of our small actions and their cosmic consequences.
sometimes I lean on the skeletons of words I use to fill
the long evening of solitude that opens up between us,
other times I turn wayward like a disobedient clock.
the shell closes in anticipation of another rift.