Tranquil

The steady rain washes over the hopscotch blocks that required the secret steps, immersing lines defined, numbers plotted, footstep accomplishments in the calming hum that is background to cookies and milk and forgotten skinned knees on the sidewalk of afternoon shine.

The exit plume of a heavy draw on a last cigarette puffed against the two-dimensional horizon cut of night outlines quiet neighborhood housetops and postured lots; the burden of the loft of the captured insight disintegrates into the temporal display of serenity nightime.

This clingy dream is still painted on the inside of my thoughts like an exploded chewing gum bubble and amidst the stickiness is the shape of the pillow that is your form and the smile, the bad-breath star in the darkness smile, which is that joke's lightness, the one you told me in my sleep inside my dream derived from that memory of you triggered by the squirt of chemical juice contentment--this guilty pleasure unwinds me like the cat stretching a yawn and clawing empty air before settling into position.

I feel clues to tranquil living are all around me, in every day observations or intersections of concidence, but the mysterious chase silently, subtly unwinds its invisible ribbon for me to unwrap.