Exhaustion
Or
Urge,
some strange narration
and
a terror of birth-pains.
Remembering a wild coupling within a mid-spring afternoon
that leaves no trace of conception.
Like how topographies segue into each other
on tiring train journeys
with no pride of being
and all you know
is just a change of names
for the states and the councils.
Or, how rooms change their smells
secretly
when you return after an age of distraction;
the doors small, the corridors smaller.
These are stories laughed out of joint.
Free and untrue to science.
The banks that look on burning bridges bring letters
fit to stack up
under the lens of your lamp's surprise.
Revise them. Bear the dehiscence.
The cramps for the sheaf of searching
into newer births.
Failed story-tellings are your lived experiences.
Stories that love and belie.
Stories that take more of gravy to the grave.
They fail your failures like forgotten vocabulary.