Desperado

It is not a question.

It is not even a name.

Desperado.

You.

The shape of a man carved from riding,

fence-line man, straddling the in-between like a hinge.

You ride the silence like it owes you something.

So long — long being the word for a time that has no edge, a line walked, worn down, not by feet but by refusal. By the way not choosing becomes the only choice.

You are hard, yes, but not like wood, not like stone. Hard like thirst, like the way the creek won’t look at you in July.

You have your reasons. They move in you like fish move under ice.

These things.

These things that are pleasing you.

Don’t you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy. She’ll beat you if she’s able. You touch her and you do not even leave a fingerprint.

The Queen of Hearts waits with her hands in the dirt, but you pass her, again, again, again, because she bleeds real.

And what is it you want? Only what you cannot carry. Only the thing beyond your grasp because to want what you could hold would mean holding it.

Fine things were laid before you — but you looked past the table to the window, to the field, to the fence.

Age doesn’t move forward in you — it settles.

It thickens like dust behind your eyes.

Your hunger — it drives you not toward something, but away from everything. Some people call it freedom. You wear it like a coat turned inside out. You are not young.

Some people speak of freedom. They speak. Voices, mouths moving like fish gaping in this dry, dusty creek. Your bootsteps echo like iron doors closing behind you.

And the winter —  doesn’t it get into your bones now, more than it used to? The sky hangs there, still and unpromising, no snow, no sun, just a long forgetting. The day bleeds into night without apology. You can’t tell one feeling from the next — the highs, the lows — they’re all flat now, like a crop after the rain has soaked it senseless.

Ain’t it funny how the feeling — once cupped like a burning match in your hands — goes away?

Breath in winter.

Desperado. Why don’t you why don’t you why don’t you —?

Let somebody.

The gate was never locked.

The fence is open but you don’t know how to walk through what isn’t there.

You better.

Before the gate closes behind you. Before your name forgets how to sound like you.