I can see hollow places in the hedgerow.
There are voids from stalk to stalk, but they shield each other from the outside world. An aegis of natural kinship forcing me out.
Safe, inaccessible, inviting, shadowed loam hints of escape.
Keeping to the public path is compulsory.

And there are parched things here maintaining their drought despite the deluge as the fountain grass keeps watch o'er the spillway below their wall. The rainwater doesn't wash out all the antiquated, little, abandoned pennies discarded there with facades slowly being worn away.

A dozen blunt faceless men stare up at the bridge with no mouths with which to share the careless, one cent wishes which flung them here to be forgotten.

I know it's wrong.

But for a second it smells like wild onions--like home. Life's intoxicating perfume floods, impairs good sense. Amidst Cassian's Choice, October Skies above, below staining a gray skyline with hidden life--

I had choices to; decisions too late to undo.

I uprooted myself from that silken touch and holy embrace. I remember the first time I felt lace. Now a cassock hangs void hinting of a bypassed path. Now I lay fallow like a spillway waiting to be stained with another year of shadowed hopes.

There are hollow places in me the rain can't touch. An aegis of broken kinship keeping the world out.