Shrine
The world shrinks in the darkness. The black space between my eyes squeezed shut and the back of my eye lids. The room contracts, the heat swells, the beat thrums.
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This place is becoming a shrine.
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Walk in the room, find the lightswitch, drop your purse on the floor before finding the rest of your peace. A bottle of wine, a cloud of smoke, the soft sounds of a record in the corner. And we see a bag, hanging on the back of the office chair, light and empty in the summer sunshine of the beach, or remembered and stretched around parcels and presents and held against my breast in the wet misting rain of Seattle nights. How can canvas be both foreign and fancy, and somehow so down home I want to live inside of it. I never knew I liked karaoke so much until you showed me. I never knew a lot of things.
Once the buzzing stops, open the bag on the ground at your feet, and click into the pile of employment that never gets finished, the drop box that never drops. The background of my laptop, a stolen moment from a life I didn't live. The cool of the forest and the blown out whites of the sunlight beat the staccato of a sloshing tray in a dingy film lab in santa barbara more than a decade ago, and remind me that i used to care about things that were beautiful and inefficient, instead of chasing perfection until it makes me sick.
Even at rest, I can't get away. But why would I want to? A bracelet that digs into my skin each night because i refuse to ever take it off. Letting me consider that her sister is out there, hopefully warm against the soft skin on the inside of your wrist. In a stack of precious metals, this brass band burns hotter than a pan in the kitchen, holding my wrist while I look for the stars to guide me home.
Home. Home is where the heart is. The portfolio in my bag, a practice room full of empty notes and half considered offers of undying love. I cannot bear to mess up, so I don't even bother half the time. Failure is worse than apathy, or is it. I forgot what rules I made up for myself when you walked in the room and I realized it was all games anyway. A game I won't win, but I'm willing to play until my fingers bleed and my head screams mercy.
Even in the dark, in the folds of my bed covers, in the cushion of my pillows, in the dark depth of a leather bag in the dark corner of a darker bar. The book I am reading by candlelight, carried in luggage from sea to shining sea. And in case I forget, the zine I am also reading that reminds me of the taste of lemon curd.
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This place is becoming a shrine, a holy and sacred place papered with dinner receipts and lesson plans.
A shrine to you, to what I imagine about you, to what I wish for us.
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This place is becoming a grave; lost ideas, and forgotten hopes. I can smell you in the sheets, and taste you on my tongue, and have no idea where you are in my dreams any longer. I used to find you in the clouds when I slept, now I can't seem to see you for the air in front of me.
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This place is a shrine to what I never deserved, and will never get to have. But which, in my mind, at times, feels so right I cannot bear to take a breath for fear of breaking the spell.
