Over the counter eating cinnamon toast

“My hands are tied to pages inked to bring” a familiar sense back. Worn out lifeforms spent molting to the environment. Walking different paths hoping for today. It’s here but the dog days of winter still smell the same. Tinctures titrating the hollowness of frozen wind. The oppressive presence of road salt.

I’m armed with stories directed at some far off version of myself. Pages conjuring the intellectual history of something I can’t put my finger on. I’m trying to say something but nothing in particular comes out. The epicenter must be marked on the map halfway between neither here nor there.

Can I touch wounds that haven’t healed? The ones visible through squinted eyes. Right there etched into existence like a perpetual contour – laced with fears driving this crusade home. Not a happenstance, my instinct says it’s because there must be someone better equipped. Even the opening line is cribbed from someone else (*fob*) who said it better. But the feedback loop picked up an echo chamber and nothing but mumbles and bites from breakfast transmit the airwaves.

I’m dancing around the topic, not ready to permeate the surface. Still the words are truant. Freeballing free associations while my thinking cap is out to lunch. But there’s always a contingency plan and it means calling in sage truths dialed back in the clock.

I’m thinking about my mom. She was 29 when she had me and that truth became the sun in which I orient. Born under a crescent moon approaching 30 orbits on my elliptical path. Still waiting for light to strike that casts her earth-side just like the rest of us. So much bigger than life, than any lifeform I could inhabit. She dodged real-life demons. She ascended, only for her wings to be clipped. She rose again. Her grass grew even greener the next time. Icarus but humanly human. Clever as they come but never a grifter. Circumstances tested her limits, even I considered waging war.

I sense her and I’m called back home. The scripture was within reach this whole time. Etched into existence like a perpetual contour – in her percipience like some prophecy. It was written in the stars. Right side up or upside down, there’s only one direction. Keep going.

The stream of consciousness came and went while I stood over the counter eating cinnamon toast.