Adequate Expectations

Salty fingers. Swollen with the urge to touch something out of reach.

You're a robin. Painted chest always a target. You're a snowman. Empty scarf and hat. Coal eyes on the ground again. Because it's never cold enough.

There's a formula to this chaos. It pricks my thoughts and coaxes me to chart every ascension and subsequent drop. Find thoese clues and assemble some truth from them. If truth could ever be something other than a slave to our regrets.

There's a bed. As empty as it is. Warm. With every wrinkle still left where we made them. I can't sleep in it anymore. Can't even lay there. But I can pull back the blankets and absorb the scent of what happened there.

There's a page. Without words on it. It's what I read when alone betrays. To swallow the nothing and know that it has an end.

And its isn't mine.

So long are these hallways. So far I wander in them. Avoiding every door. There's nothing I seek in any of those rooms. It's the stairs I'm looking for.

Not to go up or down. But to know that I can.