Closer to Murder than Not

Travelers are subject to clouds. Between the mountain and the summit of the mountain there is nothing but a journey. We are antiquated, discarded like old calendars, we are made of what nobody wanted anyway.

Hand-painted rocks on the shelf by Sylvia Plath's three books, making me smile briefly, before slipping into the specifically intimate sadness I feel about all suicides. It rains off and on but the horses don't care. Speaking of which, I'm leaning into adjectives now, damn the many teachers who tried to counsel me otherwise.

Other ways? Jeremiah and I debate the merits of buying a car, but my heart is only halfway into it, as it's his life and money, and I won't love him differently either way. Pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream.

The abiding interest in Socrates, even as a little boy, how his name danced on the tongue like a hot little tri-syllabic knife. We do not die and believing otherwise is a cognitive error that's stubborn as a fucking rooster. Talking for a few minutes with a stranger heading to the river, rod in hand, remembering all the fish I killed over the years, and choking back my "good luck," praying silently after that as nice a man as he was, the fish confound and deprive him.

What do dead kings say when they meet at the bottom of the ocean? The moon is before me, the color of the peonies whose yearly blooming feels closer to murder than not. Wordiness goes farther than sight, every single time.

How she tilts her head coming, eyes squeezed shut. On the wall of the hay loft where I write are half a dozen rosaries and handmade necklaces. Place a small rock beneath your tongue and watch stars flicker in the early absence of light in November: I will join you in ways that are mysterious and intimate, better than sex, finer than prayer, and darker than the interior of that stone in your mouth.

We talk about mood swings and all the while I keep remembering that pendulum I saw in some Washington D.C. museum some woman insisted swung only because the earth was turning, and I longed more than anything to hold it - make it still - and let it rest, i.e., projecting even then. Carrying my grandmothers with me, trying to get past doom in a way they insist - when they visit - is possible.