drafting driftings

i can feel all the parts of my body tonight dripping with the thick exhaustion of the day. my wrists are slack with the care and gravity they gave to the afterthoughts of sun and rain, verdant grasses and starry starry nights. the day and all its trappings rests heavy on my eyelids willing them to find firmer footing than soft print or loose cloud edges. i wish i could shake it like a dog, let it roll off me like some wild waterbird ready for flight at a moment's notice. but instead i'm tucked into this nest finding my thoughts drifting to what another body would say to mine if it were here sharing the heat and closeness of this space, what other faces are facing this eve dropping hints and clues and unmanageble packages of caring.

there are some nights when the wish for a harder life comes on me like a fever, a prickle first behind my eyes and creeping into my ears, then a sudden rush and swoop into the greater depths of yearning for some simple purpose and reason for all these inexplicable wonderings. there are some nights when i put on my thinnest cotton dress just to feel the night breeze of the world passing through it and purring up against my skin. there are some nights when i step less gently on the roughshod rooftops of this city and wait for that crumbling feeling beneath my toes, standing as high as i can, heels nipping at the clouds i can see for miles and miles in any direction but home. these nights i drink wine and roll cigarette after cigarette just to watch the smoke curl up into the trees and see if they can still breath as deeply as i can with such constriction in the chest, such bindings on the heart, such a deep pool in the mind that i might wade in there for hours, feet slipping on mossy stones and fingers grasping half dead branches that curl up to the starlit sky making dreams of blossoms and heavy fruit that might one day grace their delicate branches, might stretch the soft fibers of their pith and core.

i don't know where they come from, nowhere and everywhere are my best guess, my worst too. this is why we have institutions, traditions and the success machine to tell us what the next track and groove is. all i can do is perch on the soft cloud of cotton sheets and pass my fingers over guitar strings as hard as i can to hear some words ring out, some vibrancy in the air. these are someone else's days i know it but they are mine too all crafted and grooved with time and and intricacy of cellular conflagaration on a fresh friday night when the moon is a prayer candle lit in the sky for none and everyone at all. it'a a hard thing i think to know too much about what you don't know, to see too many of the things you don't seem to see but see through like a child veiled in bridal robes or funeral garb. there is a whole story here but who would tell it when there are dishes to do and the kitten staring at me from the neighbors window who seems to have figured it all out over the ages.

there are always mornings that follow, of course. mornings that come clear headed and new, softborn from a night's stillness and reprieve. i find these mornings like breadcrumbs in the forest, like offerings left on an alter shrouded in air still heavy with incense and prayer. i follow them with every particle of my being i can muster into a new hope and fascination with the world. this is perhaps the path to follow, i say to my selves, this path of endearing moments and lights and deep seated principles - the physics of morality cannot be constructed in a vacuum and so the world will inevitably swirl on and we will catch its hem from time to time to snag a string of understanding or plant a kiss of gratitude for what we may not see all around us always. I am forever thankful for these mornings, they rise like the tide in me, carrying any wave-ragged vessel to the lee side of my worries, to the breath of calm that comes from finding yourself in the moment and not out of luck, change, tidings. there is a new tomorrow in me, always, this is do know but where that flicker of sureness comes from is still to be seen. Today i took ginger and corriander, allspice and nutmeg and rubbed them on my hands until the brillance of those scents were embedded under my fingernails, trained into my nose and lingering on my mind.

it's bedtime agian. i don't know where these words came from but thank you for being out there to recieve them. it will be strange i think, to speak to you whenever that next spoken moment is after so much tapping into the distance and dark to you. how is it that i found you, an individual that seems to find no room to judge me, in all this strange motion and sound that comes after being born and walking this world for a short while? if i were to wrinkle time for a moment, find the folds and pin them tight to each other for space of a sunbeam i would. stop the passing glance of the world, stop this looking over my shoulder and under the bed and rest these fetterings into some tender thought of spring and lilacs and a long country road with no other purpose but to travel down, lacy branches arching overhead and the wind picking up the rest of the baggage until it all floats out beyond the shoreline, bobbing in time to the inhale exhale of meeting a new day. i have poured it all out, i think sometimes, beyond myself and so must watch the spread of will and way until i can lay some border down for it to pass through, drop over, nuzzle against. this life is so good to me but how can i return in kind, in kindness, when i've this slippery fool's gold to rub betwixt finger and thumb, today and tomorrow? this is a strange world we live in to be sure, but to be sure is never a good thing. i think i am full of contradictions tonight, sated with percieving from too many perspectives, percolating to the brim with a salt stained fairness to myself. go to bed, ellie, go to bed and find another day tomorrow when you will be wanting it all over again so i will lick the seal on this day and send it off with all the others.