words

the wells have been dried up for some time now
and nothing looks or feels the same anymore,
nothing gets us out of bed with passion
or inspires some semblance of hope,
meanwhile the bell summons the faithful to the vespers
while the rest of us sit on cracked concrete slabs
waiting for the sun to burn out,
waiting for the universe to start moving inward,
waiting for that stray bullet with our name written on it
to shatter lungs quicker than fear.

the smell of restlessness chokes the air
as we rap our knuckles without rhythm,
not knowing where it all went,
why those holes no longer look back at us,
still we’re unsure what to keep and what to spit out,
what words mean and what they don’t.

the dirt beneath our heels no longer a memory
but an abstraction of delusion,
something from another day we stayed at home
smashing the seconds between eyelids heavy with indifference
and those rays keep shining down with no indication of fatigue,
we stretch out in the shadows and breathe in the fumes
trying to recall what it was before it all went dry.

-S.C. Martinez