Silhouette On Fire

Screen Shot 2020-06-27 at 8.08.11 PM
Wishes by Instagram user fazztravelss

 

Such an odd stance against the back-light.

A lone fence post.

 

Straggled barb wire weeping to the ground

like limbs, forgotten in exhaustion, being

dragged into twilight.

 

But from where I sit, I cannot tell, is it into

new day or lonely night our traveler sets his

stark, weather-beaten brow?

 

Going into dawn would make him a triumph.

One that has seen the mountain and the

valley and has come home with stories

and pockets full of trinkets for girls and boys

who always brush their teeth.

 

Into dusk makes him despondent and coarse.

He has been in a town and fits better

where there are no edges. It makes him bearded

and rough in the hands and face. He sticks

in the minds of the few he meets but never sticks

in their view.

 

The light rides the ridges and paints so thin

a strip of red that it is as if the black has been split

by a dragged razor and our man seeps into the blood

of this wound before it may close or open too wide,

spilling out all vicissitudes of nature, spoiling all mystery

and fear of the tiny places our minds crawl to when

stars are hidden and our world is but a single stoke

on a finger-painting.

 

I find that I am wishing him to be one o’er the other.

I want him to be the one I want him to be, the one

I need him to be.

 

He may change with the light, but I know he will

always be there.

 

I know he will always be here.

 

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