The Unraveling

Like everything else,

Palpitations have shelf lives

Beats time lapse through open doors

That stutter in relentless exuberance

Expiration dates mark every whisk of an embroidered tongue

This here?

This is time unfurling to the refrain of an angel’s wing span

that has wrapped itself around the earth

Two folds.

To return, here, back again.

In a dizzying display of fanatical artistry

We bend our necks to pose questions beyond a withered stratosphere

Our mechanical murmurs weaving through the minefields

of downtown asphalt slathered with graffiti politique

Here, we beg our questions

What riddles animate the nights?

The hieroglyphics that litter the erratic darkness of space

Commanding our attention

Pounding hearts settle in dry throats

Our fingertips tracing constellations from the chaotic fields of stars

And we find meaning in banality

Revelations in the routine

Disclosures

But is it enough?

No matter how celestial

Morse code whispers make for poor conversation

And timid echoes mimic only the unequivocal response of:

Silence

Is to be expected.

And these paradoxes will keep us up all night

With our eyes affixed to the sprawled blank canvas of awakened souls

Scuffling across rooftops in pursuit of the cold air

That fills our lungs with the unraveling.

Until unstoppable forces meet immovable objects

And move them

Leave them bloodied, ragged and torn

Leave them vivid, violent and fervent

Leave them tempered, addled and lost

Leave them still

Leave them be

Until somewhere

The flutter in a heart exhales

At the very moment it meets a racing mind

Both nodding with apprehension

An understanding

That only the questions that were ever worth asking

Will have been answered

When day breaks.