santos scribes

make no mistake, it was hers
it lived in her hair and in her skin cells
each one of her thoughts and actions
the words she read, the words she wrote,
each one flowed through it.

to the external eye, the mist was mistakable
it didn’t hang heavy like a bronzed shield
or smell light like the irrefutable scent of her father’s cigarettes
no, it clung and it acted; like thick coastal fog on a cool boston morning
it stayed and it clung and it clung and it acted
for each of the days and all of the weeks
for the eternity of the hours thereafter,
it stayed and it clung and it acted.

the truth was, most people barely noticed it;
few thought it was what made her special or mysterious; moody even
even now it isn’t clear if it was some sort of self-imposed fulfilling prophecy
or just a gimmicky by-product of irrevocable tragedy
the guttural blow came as she became aware of its presence in the shadow of its absence
when one day in the middle of it all, she began to feel it lift and draw back; recede.

after the receding there was what in hindsight must have been a reseeding-
a gaping hole: the absence of an abscess
the lustrous enchantment of disembodiment: the seed
life became luminous and uncomfortable
like slow rising houselights on an old rusted dimmer
signaling the end of a once endless night.

the other day i heard a man i trust say that if peace is what you’re after then your clearest path to peace is to focus on the simplest piece of peace in your surroundings; the give of a pillow, the breeze through a forgotten window
this man, whom i trust, believes that by staying with this microscopic feeling of peace, sinking all the way into it, the peace grows to expand, to envelope
leaving no room for anything but peace to be present
and it’s almost like that, this fog
only it isn’t peace; it’s something much more continuous and convoluted than all that.