It was the way the trees spread out like outraged arms toward the sky. The grey in your eyes and everywhere else we looked. A dog barked and the mail slot clanged. Home again where visiting hours have begun. They never end and you never leave. Walking the streets late at night brings that yearning, the restless implants below your skin, bumping up at inconvenient times. The other ones make slow improvements when what you need is the now, your chest swelling with cold air, salty tears torn from your eyes, the pine needles to deliver something worth breathing in. No one asks for any of this. The cold flow of unattended life, the blank faces, the purchases and receipts.

It was the way rain fell across your face, eyes wide and shining. The cracked and swollen sidewalks, the screeching of your bicycle’s brakes. A leaking roof, a broken dryer, the things that need fixing when so much else is broken. We learn to survive through failure, leaving wreckage in our wake. We forge ahead out of desperation, armed with scraps of what we think worked before. Will the sky ever clear, or will the roof cave in on our heads. Does it even matter.

It can be the rubbing away of a greasy brand. The slipping off downstream. Evolution of the day-to-day, a smoothing out. The cracks, the breaks, the swells, the leaks, all of it stuffed in a burlap sack. Hurl it from the roof and watch it sink heavy in the rain. Watch it loosen the knot across your chest. This fraying will be our salvation, it will be our last rite.