Traditional Cataclysms

Always with the mockingbird on her sleeve. Saying nothing. Gathering the crumbling mask with iodine fingers. Cleanse me. Of this absentee death. Give me back the life this freedom has stolen. It's not tomorrow until we're alone again. Towers collapsing in the distance. Worlds within them. The future. A burnt map. Man. The last wolf. In a forest of swine.

Coddling the lies until a truth emerges.

Asking the molecules to slow down. I go. I come back. The same. Again and again. I have my arguments with gravity. In short documentaries that never make it to film. Just words on a billboard I call when. Thick crayons melting into the yellowed paper. Where I sketch. Parables called then. Maybe I was. Maybe I am. Or have been. Hungry mosquitoes of if sucking the blood of now. Poisoning us with the itch.

We'll never change. We'll never learn. We'll always keep the future far away. No matter how close it gets.

In thick pieces of chalk she draws the tableau. Rocks and hops. Counting the ovens. To shove the witches into. All the candy houses too sweet to dismiss. Falling down. Around the us.

I remember the future. This is not it.

We're not there. Never were. We're not even missed.