These Days
a prose poem from the past
These Days Hungover, I watch wind compose a world too bright to comprehend: sidewalk scabbed with rocksalt, thick shadow thrashed thin through traffic. From this angle the road’s a knot gone slack. I wait to cross while gulls shuffle north over a closed Chinese restaurant—the worn white sign and worn white wings, an unfinished phrase dissolving in air. + I spent the afternoon sifting through a dream—bright rubble of syllables—for a voice to counter the rain. + These days are faceless. The hours monochrome. I talk to myself, as I’m talking now, to drown the sound of thought, to claim a space where absence hums—where I become breathless, and You are all that’s left.