City
of Springs
When all the light in the city
came from a can
they held their hands over, he
broke a bottle over his head
and collected the pieces in a
velvet purse. Standers
by the way took pictures as he
brought forth a sort of cry,
victory over tempered glass. The
next morning,
he picked small shards from his
scalp, matted with blood.
For years he buried himself in living
and reliving.
Telling always master of fortune
and deed,
an elevated sense of the
semi-accomplished. Sometime
in his late twenties, he found
his first gray hair – it sprung
from his palm when the blue-gray
wagon pulled out of the drive.
Standing on the asphalt in sudden
rain, he felt a flash
of recollection, of backseat
indiscretion, impulse revisited.
Never to be visited again. Smoke.
In a stone compartment
under the highway overpass,
curtains, and the gray came up
like an exponential seed, hulking
sprout, strangling the air
and dirt and the very sun that
made it. From his bag of broken
glass, he unsheathed a jagged
tooth, green to protect its former
contents from light, traced a
seem in the couch in the den.
He peels back its floral skin,
blue and yellow, faded,
and climbs inside. Dark, coiled
towers, he wears the new
beginning like a crown, proud to
be beaten, the most
furious of cushion lumps. Years
bleed away and the postscript
never arrives. Shut the lights
off, if you’re brave, squint.
Once everything’s gone dark you
might see him move again.
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