screen door slams

thunder road is a promise of a future, of
a way out of this dark winter to a spring that slithers through
dewy weeds no longer frozen with the dawn.
this ceramic jar of a house has finally been uncapped and
when noon hits, that pinprick of bright blinds me. a rich promise
is this present yielding to tomorrow, but I still can’t reach the rim unless
I am poured out and stale, mixed into mud, and clouded with the
disrupt of dirt into the air.

the only thing is that thunder road is still a road. a path
that has been laid, foundations and plans wrought into reality.
it was made to be followed.
out of this town, out of this time, you leave one season only to
find another. and with only four options, universal mathematics
foretell variables, but after how many repeats? at the end of
this road is another jar, another
dark under and over and through lids that shake like leaves with
the touch of a turning breeze.

it was a road that first brought me to that shore at the edge
of the world. a road that began at the lips and bricked past
the eyes. a road that always turned a blind corner, a road
that consumed soles and tongues. it was the crushed
earth, tarred like a criminal, that showed me I can’t stay here.

the blade at the top of the weather was cold, yet still burns my body;
I am branded. I sweat, yet it falls from my brow as snow,
dusting the roads that I trusted. the seasons lose their reasons
as they mix in
the mortar of my heart, crushed with the pestle of my poison
and I can only see a ship cresting a sea-stone horizon. with
a battered lesson in hope and loss, I now open my chest
and see for myself and know more than just the roads in this city.

there’s an island, so a coast, a bronzed angel lighting my way,
and the ruins of golden towers. this is a broad way
for my feet to be finding, yet I am swept away again like so
much dust, later found beneath the woven floor. thunder road
ended at the west, sunk into the sea with a misting star,
until I turned around, and found it stretching east,
that man-wrought shortcut to the nearest dawn.

it’s impossible going back because it is impossible to move
anything but forward. location is a myth, time is a legend,
and all that anyone really knows is what it feels
like to be carried away. fate matters as little as choice
and answers are never punctuated. the earth dawns as it sets
and spins tight as it is unwound. thunder road is only an echo
of your lifeflash that already happened; counting the seconds,
the steps, to figure how far away you just might be.