I can feel myself becoming more and more
  Withdrawn.

Slowly drawing away like a picture
  Faded in the sunlight from endless
Summers on a warm dashboard.

Smoky breezes pass and swirl around
  Radio airwaves like a ballet.

Gently, it plays.

Like my voice.

But sound just gets eaten by
  The east wind and carried
Downward into the mundane.

There is an impulsive dissonance..

No one recognizes who I am anymore
  [Except for an equally lonely barista].

Perhaps her and I are the only pair
  Who hear the dissonance ringing?

Perhaps we can lighten one another's burden,
  But we're much too reticent for conversation.

Breathing harmonizes with the whispers
  Of air passing through the trees,
Still my voice is lost somewhere in
  The hot atmosphere,
Whipping around like an only child's
  Lost birthday balloon in the bright sky.

The balloon gives up and pops under pressure.
  No one hears its melancholic resonance
Through the crashing airwaves
   But see its shriveled carcass falling
Into some suburban lawn.

The distance grows like sunflowers,
  Germinated by the buzzing few
Who enter and exit my life as
  Quickly as they possibly can.

I watch as people attempt their facile exit
  As if speeding through a traffic light.
"Eventually they will crash", I tell myself.
  But they articulate too well with one another.

Heat radiates and swells within my chest.

Lines blur together.
  Forgotten images become the
Cloudy shapes of a projective
  Test for the heartsick.

A wearied aperture opens and closes
  Trying to capture a glimmer of an
Accidental memory,
  But the heaviness of summer light
Exerts a certain gravity upon me;
  Ultraviolet-B lethargy.

Everything has faded.
  Even the black smudge,
The careless finger who eclipsed
  The camera eye,
Is faded to a hazy grey .

With time the heat swallows the photograph
  And leaves behind an empty canvas
As I become withdrawn and absolute.


Now, there is no substantial evidence to prove
  My existence...

Except for a blank polaroid waiting to be recycled
  Into another portrait of someone less forlorn [extinct] than me.