fallow

A final delivered given over every key every handing out of what repeats and enters brought into and held there, a kind of satisfied, endless ruins of erased empire, all stuck in the tide the bones you once wore, shells shattered in the seaweed, the heart made sick as if to burst with all this apology and panic, this and otherwise, the taste of the bottle on the lips, genetic backsliding into early forms all this pseudoscience, this pestilence, cities carved into the hollow of a log, shipsick and honeysmeared and flies by the hundreds, all pulled up into godsight from everywhere at once, heavy with milk and puddleshallow breath, reach to touch but do not make the contact for the contact is affirmation of presence and presence supposes culpability, the food in the mouth but not to chew or swallow, a return on the promise of supposed infinite potential now just so much bleach in the stomach and throat, coiled into and fallen fast asleep in the giant cannons facing the fields and waiting, the graves opened, and says this will not be the moment of discovery, of exposition, the thing you thought you were to learn from all this is just a joke that stains the mouth to speak, stains the air where it travels, sits like lead in the ears. All of this is dust, the greenery of the crops all paint and stain, every delight come up short with your fingers stuck to the canvas, a series of washes until nothing lasts. Look, take the portions remained and consider; what of this could have once been otherwise? She arrived to mystify and did such and vanished and now I count the days and wait. I wasn't being entirely honest. The words shadow and trail now, statement of intent, ear to the rails, clouds caught in the trees. None of this is real.