the wanderer #325.

the wanderer #325

the sun pours into a single room cabin
through a waxed over, cracked window.
the dust & age of 10,000 cigarettes creates
a haze in the room you could cut with a chainsaw.
an old leather chair sits in a corner.
the only piece of furniture aside from a mattress & blanket nest
that huddles itself in the opposing corner.
two vastly different worlds that defeat time & logic
to survive in the same small quarters.
random literature lines every inch of every wall
stacked to his hip around the outline of the den.
the worn, water stained, wooden slats of the floor
are completely hidden away by 997 composition tablets.
conversations.
words he never speaks, hasn't spoken in decades
but rattle through this place like a train passing by
on the hour, every hour.
he's forgotten what he looks like.
what his audible voice sounds like.
even if he wanted to speak, his vocal chords
gave way to amnesia & deprivation years ago.
he knows the back of his ragged hands & tips of his
bony fingers like clockwork though,
the buzz & the whip that come with.
his only trusted companions in this world of silence & violence
& beauty & truth.

this morning, he sat, like he did every morning.
drinking metallic tasting water from a metallic tin can.
the givings up of the fresh spring that ran in the forest
behind the cabin.
his internal organs sinking into their hollowed out
frame as his muscle & flesh sank into the leather chair.
in his hands, he held the AM ritual.
a folded letter he touched only for physical example
for he didn't even open it anymore to re-read it.
he had scanned those lines a hundred thousand times.
the yellowed & brittle paper was far to fragile to risk
unfolding & re-folding everyday anyway.
read.
painful more than the day before & the day before that
but not as much as tomorrow.
when the sting had finally absorbed, he simply slipped the letter
into a book that he spun in his hands for a few moments
& then gently placed atop one of the hundreds of stacks
of otherwise meaningless jarble.
he went to the door.
as he looked out over the trees & commotion of the morning forest,
the sun cut through there as well & spilled it's luminescent guts
in patches on the brush covered floor.
his legs were much too shaky, knees weakened over the years.
he would have to take the walk in his mind alone.

he closed his eyes.

he saw the stones & split trunk tree.
the dried creek bed that ran parallel to the path they used to travel.
squirrels & song birds darted to & fro in front of him, entertaining his
slow & cloudy eyes even here in his imagination.
he felt the warmth of daylight
& a soft, lulling breeze blew through his long silver hair.
he stopped & picked a handful of the wild purple lavender that grew
halfway between here & there & held it to his face.
tears soaked his long beard as he imagined handfuls of her
that once shared that sweet sweet smell.
tears fell only here though.
his eyes had dried up long ago on the other side of closed.
stopping in the shadows of a youthful stride,
he knelt to the ground.
with his hand, he brushed away the blanket of leaves
so he could read the stone.
A VOICE TO CARRY.
A WORD TO CUT TRUE.
SHE MADE CLANGING CYMBALS
RESOUND THROUGH WINDOWS OF BLUE.
here she was.
he bent & kissed the earth.
laid his ever mourning body over that spot,
limbs out wide like a child making a snow angel.
he felt the chords rise up through the soil
& dig deep the wet earth,
tying themselves together somewhere between him & her once more.
he lay there for an hour, until she'd said all she needed to say.

he opened his eyes.

turning from the porch, he moved back inside.
having a sip of water & methodically picking out
one of the many writing tablets, he sat back in the chair.
he lit his cigarette with a match & shakily raised it to & from his lips.
for a second, with real eyes, he saw her sitting on the bed.
a young & foreign frame, facing away from him.
sometimes he saw her this way as well, but it was far from often.
she would appear young, as when he met her.
or grown, as when her children knew her.
or, as he remembered her most vividly, aged, as she was when she left to fly in fields of white.
it was only seconds & then she vanished.
he choked on the smoke & breath
he hadn't realized he was holding in & clambered at the tin can to calm himself.
he opened the notebook.
he ran his hard hands over a blank page & could feel the words begin to vibrate.
electric & hot, vowels & consonants stung at the inside of his bones.
the chords, loosing themselves from his finger tips,
begging with force to dirty this page forever.
the buzz & the whip that come with...
young & free.
wild & alive.
he wrote.