The long Halloween

Fall is the cruelest season, you know
It’s when the wind carries the softest lingering
Of cyclical regrets come back around
Like a familiar chill settling into my bones.

The Long Halloween
A sentence of seven years’ bad luck
Served concurrently in the shadows where minor inconveniences
Accumulate to the tragedy of futures mourned, lives unlived.

Yesterday I worked my spirit down to the bones
All day long in an empty room
Perpendicular rows of fluorescent false sun
Shine on, burning the shadow of my typing fingers
Into the plastic tapping beneath them.

Clock out, pick up the pup from daycare
Make the long, crowded commute home
With the Armageddon sound on the stereo
Greeted by an empty house and the sound

Of everyday drudgery echoing from the walls
Fix nothing much at all for dinner
Disheartened, watch the hours fade into frustration
Wrought by every page unwritten, every chorus that never comes in

I’m out here alone
Just like everyone else
Just like you
Waiting
Listening
Are you listening?

If you can hear me
I wish for you
All the softer things
We filled our hours with
When our days were so bright

Drunk on spit and blood and an unshakable love
For you to touch your dreams
Even the ones ones that reach all the way
To where the sky gives birth to light
I wish for you, everything.

For all of us, a respite
From the ill winds of annihilation
Blowing cold, heralding the last sunrise
A respite from the winds that blow cold
To bring the final war
All the way home.