A Hand Held in a Theater, A Wisp of Steam from a Hot Mug

 Picks up. Slows down. 

A fingerprint on the lens. A wisp of steam from a hot mug. Evening, then morning as an entirely different place. A creeping ache through my legs, hips, spine, shoulders and then my head is too heavy to hold up. 

A few hours of peace. If that's what they were, anyway.

A few hours of passing seconds and wasted opportunity and thinking over and over "time is running out", being paralyzed in exhaustion and hopelessness. 

Some thought of Maine. Some thought of conversations and some sense of relief and loss together, clinging for now until fading eventually into the black under my ribs. Where it will stay, where you will live with the others, until a sidewalk or a grocery store, or a destroyed linoleum floor in some rotting dark room throws you back in my face.

Picks up. Slows down. Hot mug. Dirty lens. Close my eyes and wade through it all.

A few hours of peace.

Each moment prior stretched long and thin, pulling and ripping in dull and beige clouds until I turn the key over, drive home, and stare through the fingerprint on the lens at the wisp of steam from the hot mug. 

"The grind" is such an incredibly accurate term. A term we only really appreciate in reflection. My bones to dust. My mind to abstraction. My body to nothing. Ground up, left in small piles behind desks and steering wheels, across beds and couches and laundromats and in the backgrounds of photos where someday you will say "oh, and there they are. Don't they look happy here? I miss them sometimes."

Ground into nothing, slowly under the weight of you all. Of this all. Of all.

Picks up. Slows down. Forever until stops.

A few hours of peace, increasingly sparsely touched with flecks of hope, of weightlessness, of indifference. Where the pressure subsides and the clouds part and the pull relaxes and for a moment, usually only that, a memory of what it is to be alive. Some idea of luminescence, far away. A struggling photon to dream of.

A hand held in a theater. A kiss as you wake. A thought of you for being you and a smile beside it.

Some idea of luminescence. Here and now and we know it isn't always. It isn't forever. It can never be once it no longer is, but; here. Now. Love. Joy. Hope. 

A few hours of peace. Spread out over years. Keeping the dream. Keeping the piles of dust from blowing away completely. Slowing the grind and relaxing the pull and though a wisp of steam from a hot mug, 

a few moments of peace.

Picks up

slows down.

A hand held in a theater.