These cheap sheets itch
and no matter how many sheep
manifest on this spackled ceiling,
every single night, I am a sentinel.
Counting backwards from total
loss to love's conception in a truck
cab, on the parkway, stars
can't undo this particular set of failures.
So i breathe deeply
in a way that shows
i'm in way over my head,
but i'm wearing it well.
---------
One deliberate step takes my body over
the canyons edge, chasing air towards the river,
where the water may wash me clean,
but the fall will hurt like hell.
I don't have the strength to drag myself out
and crawl up that cold, sharp rock again.
I'd rather drown somewhere down stream
in the warm, still water of the lake.
And if clean hands try to save me,
I'll take them, and shake them.
Life is too short to be impolite
and too long to abide loneliness.
One moment closer to sleeping in the water
as a broken man, but more solidly
climbing, slowly back up the canyon
just to walk off the edge.
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