(all i've got left is) good bones

i am, by this point, through using the façade to excuse the tragedy of my internals. i am here in the library of a third-class school district, somewhat richer for the moment of being told by the pizza-dealer that it's his pleasure to serve me chicken caesar on a wheat wrap paid with a credit card, no tip.

it is more important to be warm than it is to be hot, i tell myself as i prepare to rescue the black box of my violin from the heating vent, tie my borrowed long tie in the dark silent mirror, and clip up (really down) the street to the theater. the bulletin board by the bathroom advertises to come see the symphony and george bailey, too. i exit to a young adult novel coincidence.

once more recently i thought that i was only on the way of waiting, not falling down. the descent has not slowed, however. i have tasted its harsh snow-melt wind. no rain, only slush. no action; only natural state. still we turn too tight around school buses, because no one has the patience when the tires slick the street.

there is nothing left to wait for. i truly know that now. there is no excitement in this evening, only the biding of the hours that might once have sweetly clung. there was nothing before. there will be nothing after. there is the sorry remnant of a best-laid plan.

only my bones. only my sick, sinnowing body. only my lack of discipline, anymore, to thistle away the dollars.

don't humans all make themselves in the fires of temptation?

the world is a slow thief whose dimensions turn through the axis of the present somewhat unfortunately.

her only swift enemy is time.

only the bones remain beneath the muscle. the inventory is infantile. my stomach turns for nothing.

i'll finish it later, i tell myself, or else i'll never finish it at all.

i used to like to do things now, now, now.

but time is unpleasant. time is possessive.

time no longer wishes to borrow me. i am through conceptualizing that denial and disbelief are mine, all mine, all mine.

i am bound along on the dull adventure of an infinite divorce from past notions, idylls, of sensibility. it's not quaint. it's not cute. it's not pleasant. it's as terrifying as a monastery gated in snow along the side of an ordinary road.

stones do not belong here. stones are for people who have fought, and died, and won.

i can have stucco. i can have drywall. i can have wood, and rot, and mold.

my body is not allowed to be a temple, a sculpture, a vicissitude, a doll.

only the bones may remain. only my bones may refrain.