haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

Not exactly mercy. Something needed, though. I walked along the gray snow streets envisioning the moments found in books, and I placed phone calls to invent such times as never happen. What I sought was smooth, non-winter stretch that needed winter clothing, to protect a very hidden self from proximity to chill. If not such raw cold, constant separation from an other frayed a feeling self. That one might trust as pivotal, no matter how tattered the prompts. Always, one's own quiet breath, revealed. Ann Arbor ought to have been safe, it ought to have contained one's edges, fostered safety rather than impose the disarray upon a self. Brought down upon one'sskin as the future way of life, of handling what would brace and stir and shift the daylights out of how each hour appeared. I wanted to be given slack unspecified, in case of fray, in case of fear, in case of broken fever. As though the concept "temperate" were true, as though that might enclose me, as though I could assuage even myself from what had fueled harsh sadness without explanation.

 

Movement, not momentum, color-free, condition present without being tracked

 

Sheila E. Murphy