Grayspace

Of Sand

My brain keeps saying

"So this is how it ends,"

But it doesn't.

There's no fade out,

No roll of credits,

The scene of disaster

Doesn't run out of chapters.

The camera is supposed to go black

And the nightmare is supposed to extend the aluminum staircase

And we're all supposed to get back to where we were

Before we started watching

Spared of seeing what happens next.

But no.

The ending doesn't end.

The boiling sun rises

On a new day of empty hours

Like the unblinking eye of a murdered man

Holding his last breath

For the sigh of the flies and

The sleep of decay

But dawn to dusk twilight hangs, skin grows neither colder or warmer, and time doesn't tick

I breathe in and out, measuring a present

That refuses to pass or advance

In time to a hoarse heartbeat

That recycles the same

Unbearable second.

On better days,

I can open my eyes

As much as the bleaching Sun

Makes me wince,

I see the mounting silent miles

Between me and you

Marked by lifeless sand

And heat waves

Dancing like serpents

My ruined flesh doesn't have the moisture to mill out the tears

That would flood this hardened world of cracked clay and quiet,

That would carve a path of green to your feet,

Cool and forgiving

Bristling with the wildflowers I always meant to gift you

Like the years of sleep I would have readily surrendered

The red I would have gladly bled

The raw-throated vows of everything I have left in me

If it meant seeing that peace in your eyes again

When I tried and it worked

When time spent implied

Something of hope...

The dream evaporates and

I open my eyes again

The horizon

of baked bloodless clay

Shimmers...

In the perpetual second

A shiver

Worms into my empty ribcage

I thought

I was holding your hand

My fingers relax,

And there's a hiss of sand.