Desuetude

I follow the narrow path guarded by dry nettle and velvetleaf 

yellow, sickly and already dead.

It is laid out for me, straight 

and frigid rocks - perfect and still - roll and crack under my feet. 

My body - its nakedness echoes in the stale trees

as with each step I am closer to something.

An immutable sky, drooping in time

looks out on nothing but this empty space of

ceaseless paths and dazzled faces.

I reach for you -

my only certainty of a world that I once knew. 

I cannot catch - not even a word or a bit of your skin.

I fall, ludicrous and numb.

I, I, I -

the word is etched inside my heart.

The roots of the trees are not letting go of me. 

I am their master, the little god:

the pure white skin, the slow sea of my eyes.  They do love me.

I reach for you but instead I find

myself among the meagre bones of a rotting sparrow

lying on the cold ground in a perfect symmetry of marrow and colours. 

I, I, I -

the rapid stroke of a pen, precise and immaculate, 

standing like vertical bones,

is all I will ever find.