Eventide had blushed listless. Its once slick pink lips chapped filmy white until faded darkness claimed the screen. Crouching shelf clouds growl. The distinction between cloud and breath is long lost.

Bedroom-jailed for pre-teen misdeeds, I break out to watch the sky. My slack-jawed shutter yawns wide enough for a grateful, lithe-graceful, exit. I land dully on dust-crusted, dinner roll earth, too dry to crunch. Each damp footfall collects another coating of soft, fine flour, congealing into ghostly pedicure foam. Outside is airless, closer than my detention. There is no freshing comfort here.

As the prescient cumulus towers, the earth and I expect. We are storm-primed, desperate for the great release. We sit torrent-wired, tongues out to taste the fat rain drops. Our tardy Robin Hood will come to steal the pressing moisture from the air and send it groundward. We are alert for his redistribution. His deeds will turn flour puffs to glueing paste, and free wheezing chests in sweet, wet, relief. Low thunder is our drumroll with intermittent cymbal crashes. We wait for the splashes in slick, fuggy, discomfort.

The earth is waiting to breathe, and so am I.

Country nighttime turned off the world
Absolute window blacking
Any other life void-invisible
Universe shrunk snack-size
Existence is only this cab,
these tiny lights,
this fuzzing radio
One direction
Only ahead
Only these tracks

A change in rhythm signals new territory
Lower infrastructure spend
Budget acknowledged by
transitioning drum track
More toms
Double kick
More bass, but
no less hypnotising, no less soporific, no less slowing, no less…

Snap.
Driver vigilance alarm earns its keep
Pierced by safety sound needles
Bleary eyes split open
Only closed for seconds
Enough to dry 3am eyelash glue
Intermittent, intensifying battle
Open versus closed
Here versus where
Wake versus yawning, rocking, mesmerising, irresistible…

Snap.
Assistance required
Scan for options
Snoozing thermos drools its last drips onto the floor mat
Moment of silence for coffee, our absent friend
What else?
Lunch box offers carrot sticks
Sharp, crisp, smug
No help. What else? Cake.
A silent bargain
– okay calories, we’ve had our differences, but we need to pull together
Health is tomorrow, safety is now

Sleepiness shrinks and stretches place and time
There is only here
Only now
Battle and bargains
Winning and losing
Until the sun comes up

Malicious hearts will hurt the empath
As summer hurts the winter shore
Eroding buffers until burnout
Kind retreat, the only cure
--

End-of-summer beach
Seabirds’ shaky screech
Grey gulls too full to cry
Bin chooks too fat to fly
Sorry shoreline
Systems offline
Foot pounded
Rebounded
Flattened…
Shrub ripped
Wing clipped
Sand-******
Grass plucked
Party bruised
Cocktail-cruised
Cans on conches
Fish unconscious
Foam and flotsam
Wave-blind coxon
Soda can crab shacks
Neon pink algae tracks
Whelk shell graveyard
Absent lifeguard
**** platoons
Naked dunes
Cheapened
Weakened
Exposed…
Tidal hangover
Coastal leftover
Erosion potluck
Sitting sea-duck
Strong incoming storm surge
Winter solstice land purge
Quick and shifty beach thieves
Cyclone tempest mouth-breathes
Recalcitrant brackish aggressor
Intransigent briny transgressor
Suspensions of sediments modified
Walling and breakwaters compromised
Over, back, and whitewash makers
Bubble, rubble, boil and breakers
Weathered, not weathering
Tempered, not tempering
More block than gavel
More grave than gravel
All prisoner no guard
Grain short of a shard
Receding sand-line drift
Intensive shoreface-lift
Patient unresponsive
Highly hypertensive
Code cerulean blue…
Plant encouragement
Shoreline nourishment
Sand transplant
Grass implant
Healing hiatus
to homeostasis
Swell subsiding
King Tide presiding
Prince Neap succeeds
Warm court accedes
Managed realignment
Sanctuary assignment
Steadfast protections
Timid reconnections
Gentle, careful, soft,
and slow…
  A new beach visitor
  dips their toe

In just one split of an instant
Life force entirely withdrew
With your vitality vanished
I find myself severed in two

As heavens expand between us
I fear I’ll recall less each day…
So, I think back through the senses
To keep time’s forgetting away

I’ll always smell you as diesel
From the truck you tried to repair
And later, the antiseptic
Congealing the hospital air

I can still taste the cheap cigars
We inhaled as an attempt to cope
The blandness of the Psych Ward’s meals
where you hid your disorder’s scope

I almost still hear your singing
Of single half-melodic lines
Always found it quite endearing
How you’d repeat them so many times

And, while your laughter still cuts me
It’s Your voice I try to repress
The sound of its damage haunting
Scarred, by the life support process

I still see the flash of brilliance
Intensely piercing through your eyes
But yet, with a sense of softness
When returning silent replies

And I still feel your energy
In brief moments I feel in tune
So, I remember through senses
Until we will meet again soon