alluvial mind.

tonight, i ran full sprint after a trolley that couldn’t be bothered, even in spite of—well, a lot. it has been as long as i can remember since i could recall doing the thing that i once told myself privately i loved truly, maybe even the most. like so many things, those things came and went, ebbed, and flowed.

somewhere down the line, genuine expressions fell to the wayside in their utility, settling into crude molds in the recesses of the mind. clichés are never true; they exist in an unreal sense—infomercials, re-runs juxtaposed against late-night television. they’re holograms.

so paint a picture with words and climb into it. there’s a ladder on the frame that’s easy to miss.

it’s easy to forget at the time of their inception, or merely their publication, that they were experienced and lived. i wonder who curated that reality and told us about its grassroots—just another mirage.

after two hundred years, all that’s left is silt. sediment of the mind. alluvial soil. a clay from the mississippi: sticky, fine-grained, historically significant, left behind as the river flows. fluctuates.

eroded, conventions outmoded by

new landscapes, where

the river belted along,

the shape changed—a river renewed

by you, and your labor of love.

i hope it doesn’t break my heart the day you tell me i was worth it, and more.

roses still wilt, and we sing songs about them too—dragon’s blood and citrus rinds collide across the lines, lineage and lineage: senses i once prized—those same senses that all my smoking seems to despise, but i reassure myself with the old mold of the same old, outmoded & outdated, dusty, attic-ridden & aerated conventions.