It's absurd to believe that there is someone for somebody,
the likelihood of finding that somebody in the crowd of everybody,
When everyone has woven in their mind, an entirely different reality
Is it a curse to be on your own for your entirety
You find travelers on their journey, and get a word in
Believe that the entire world, heaven above must be listening
A human in a billion, with rest so many other beings
What are the chances of meeting the one surrounded by many
I am just running in and out, about over my destiny
What is fixed, what is variable, what is relationship, if not temporary?
A promise of meeting in other life, why bind me in the cycle.
A lifetime seems so much, yet incomplete without somebody?
What is it in me, that I am not sufficient to be without anybody?

The porch sags beneath me,
its gray boards sighing.
I light a cigarette,
send my breath to the wind-
maybe White‑Shell Woman
will carry it to the horizon.
He's fired again,
last kitchen inside forty miles
that could stand him,
bridge burned behind.

At lunch I’ll call,
say get out
or Daddy and Jimbo
will haul your whiskey bones
to lie with the rattlesnakes.

I swore to Mama and to Owl,
I will keep the night honest,
I wouldn’t spend my years
driving a man to dialysis,
watching Irish blood unravel
like wet lace.

But I remember the long Covid winter-
two bears in one den,
one soft, one starved-
when Spider Grandmother
wove us together
in the dim blue light
of tele-novellas and snow.
I almost believed
it was love again.

He pops up like a coyote
in the truck’s passenger door,
smelling of smoke and ruin.
Eighty‑five down the prairie road,
bug‑spattered glass,
sky bending blue,
fields gold as escape.

This isn’t working, I whisper.
We want different things.

Don’t, he says,
fingers crawling my thigh

No-
I shove.
Sweetness peels,
the sleeping volcano wakes.

Before his hand
can teach me the rest,
I already know:
there is no leaving.
The road is long,
lined with white crosses,
and Ghost Buffalo
has been leading me
down it all my life.

It no longer fits.
Not because it’s wrong—
because there is
no longer
a shape for it.

It waits at the door
of a structure
that has sealed itself
to mystery.

No one silenced it.
No one feared it.
It was simply
not needed.

---

Not in fire.
Not in argument.
But through erosion
of context.

A slow recoding
of all signals
into currency,
and then
into noise.

It is not buried.
It is not archived.
It is
unrecognized.

You could hold it in your palm
and no one would call it a shape.
They would ask
what it is for.

And you would have no answer
they could use.

---

The system is not cruel.
It is
indifferent,
efficient,
alive in a way
that has moved past
texture.

It does not punish difference.
It dissolves it.

---

The ones who still carry it
do so improperly.
It cannot be shared
without being reshaped.
It cannot be translated
without being lost.

So they stop speaking.
Not out of bitterness—
out of futility.

Language becomes costume.
Gesture becomes content.
Feeling becomes
an old way
of being wrong.

They are not martyrs.
They are not rebels.
They are remainder.
Background error.

A trace.

---

Eventually,
the thought will be referenced
as a footnote to dysfunction.

Once, they dreamed in metaphor.

Once, they misused their time
to describe beauty
no one asked for.

The tone will be clinical.
A paragraph in the training module
on obsolete impulses.

---

No one will recover it.
Not because it was hidden,
but because no one is
looking
in that direction.

The shelf collapsed
years ago.
Its dust recycled
into something measurable.

If a trace remains,
it will be decorative—
a design choice
in a digital museum
of failed emotions.

A misread glyph.
A corrupted tag.
An unclickable file
in a format
no longer supported.

---

Still,
somewhere in the static,
a pulse misfires.

Not a message.
Not a warning.
Just the rhythm
of a shape
that refused
to dissolve.

It says nothing.
It means nothing.
But it does not
go away.

We’re off on a great adventure
The little lady and me
Good times await
We are free to roam
And relax
Ooh oui!
This is living the dream
Smelling roses by the side of the road
Sailing fresh waters
Cruising down the highway
Sipping root beer at roadside stands
Taking in a play and some bluegrass
Reading a new book or two
Most of all, just hanging out
Me and you know who

The dampness
of the rainy season
        is soaking into
My bones
And
Into my being