Praise the evening. How it closes like a safety pin. Sometimes suddenly but often with purpose. Praise the purpose that sits behind the wheel of your words. Praise the wheeling of hours and the people who spin them with you. Praise the breakable neck of it all and how easily things fall apart but love you are a safety pin holding it all together.

She was the final one standing. An ovation across her shoulders. The most confident curls that seemed to applaud the saxophonist. She was waiting. On the edge of herself. For the train to come and carry her thoughts away from her wrecking ball mind. She envied the street musicians. How finite and beautiful their lives were. Neatly contained within an alto clef. Improvised and yet somehow flawless.

The boon of this break is in the song. In the widest pause and noticing that you are not alone. In the uncanny truth that everyone is an ant in the same mountain of sand.

This morning had a mouth and it was gaping and drooling with the day. The day was young and indecisive. I had to ask it to stay and stand up straight. Like people who do not like to wake it was stubborn and full of ache. It turned in the sky like an egg. Over but not easy.

March is the madness of winter riding the cable out of your sweater. The lonesome will gather. A family of grey will unravel their knitted mouths and everything will at last be heard.

The houseboat skirted the backwaters like a young voice. Children dotted the bank to watch us pass. Beaming with electricity. Their eyes were the brightest lamps as dusk dimmed the day almost too quickly.

The city had a lot on its mind. A hand of fog over its forehead. Calm down child you are too young for this grey thought. Cars drifted in and out of sleep like me. The pace of it all was a light trying to find its way out of the ground. Everything shook and flickered and burst as one moment became the next. Smoked itself to the curb like an awkward glance or a good cigar or a rickshaw full of nostalgia.

My mind is warehouse of ottomans. Stunning tan bodies I no longer need or use or feel. But I cannot forget the empires of lust that unraveled across their backs. Cannot blink them to dust.

He looked at me as if to check the boxes in my eyes. The affirmation of answer.

Praise the silence. The quiet that livens and the way faces change in her arms. Praise the dark. How it spreads like black sand through the hourglass of night. Praise the roof of your mouth. The house that raised your voice.

Risk can be a bitter pill but we all need it. Whether it ambles down our throats or circles the whites of our eyes. Let it find the veins of our lives and color them new. 

Relationships are like rubik’s cubes. From afar the most basic of shapes. Primary and simple and made for everyone. But in your hands their complexity will make you stumble. Over your thoughts and fingers.

They were something like a safari. Fleeting and brilliant and hair raising. But somehow there was a natural order to things. A primal but peaceful quiet that fell around them like dust. They watched themselves from a passing jeep. Legs crossed and clad in cream. Reserved as realists. Behind hands like caves they whispered about desire. The grass overheard them and inched to their waists.

I imagine there is a corridor of potted daffodils outside your apartment. Estranged from the laughing grass they were raised with. From them you learned that affection is like pollen. Moves with the wind of time. We rarely agree and I forget you have a seasonal memory.