Refugees of Reason

The Cement That Binds

Door slams.
Jacket's open, sleet slashes
And cuts as sharp as my razor
Eight hours before.

Out!
Out into the dark oily night;
The thick viscous air
Retards my flight, and
My legs tramp forward
Scuffing, crunching, marching,
More like stomping,
Through the snow.

Another door slams,
As if slamming doors
Provide the soundtrack for
Modern human altercation.
Lights blaze, the engine roars,
And races,
And the truck plows away.

Away!
Away from this catastrophe,
This crazy knife wound of a life;
Away, before I bleed out.

Headlights bounce across frigid snow banks,
The beams stab about the brush and trees
Damaging the darkness with their brightness.
The long grey stretch of asphalt
Disappears beneath my wheels
As the yellow dashes leap past,
Like a visual metronome,
Into the blackness behind, marking,
Like a thousand exclamation points,
The history between me and you.

Miles pile up
Behind us all;
Remembered experience
That people construct together
Over a lifetime;
Common histories behind,
Unknown destinations ahead,
For me,
Just beyond these lights.

Miles back,
Meeting on a drunken night,
When lights hide the black of life
And loneliness opens a door
To a cavern of aloneness.

Passion fed the soul
And masked a multitude of wrongs,
And that makes a poor foundation
For any relationship; yet the
Blackness hides a thousand hurts
That have become the cement
That binds a family and
turns this truck around.

~ gtk