Something is brewing amongst the talking towers.
They're up to something, up way high to something fifty stories above.

Weak.
I am weak, father take this thorn from my flesh. Father take this thorn from my flesh. Out of my heart, apart from my mind, gone from my soul. Father, take this thorn away.

Your grace is enough? You are sufficient and your glory be done?
All right.

I am zoey,
you were tom.


And then the tables turned, and I will be tom ever more.

All be damned, I'm soaking in the after light of a wonderful night,
and the phone rings and I shudder.

Her fingers might have curled around a paintbrush or a violin,
her voice rung out with sweet ballads or spoken with passion
to a weary and broken people. Her feet walked city streets or hiked
worn paths in green mountains.

But she is quiet, no voice to protest her future.
She is quiet, no one fought for her life to be given.

Heart breaks, breaks along the same lines it's broken a hundred times before.
Each time trying to heal and each time ripped along the same lines.
Oh, what a tender piece of flesh it has become.

Child lost, and does your body ache for it?
Hope spat, do you mourn for it?
Breath smothered, did you weep for it?

The force of this blow was unexpected,
the depth of loss much deeper,
the news unwanted to my ears.

Holy Father, if you are so good and so merciful,
so tender to your children, so swift to defend
the cause of the fatherless and the widow,
to uphold the righteous and fight for the innocent,
where does this child's story lie?

Where have Truth and Peace
and Justice run to? Why have they abandoned these streets, found no
rest in our homes?
Death is the whoremonger that has cast them out, she has lied too many times
and stolen the unwanted.

Let no breath be unwanted by us anymore.
Why does this feel so near?
I will weep, even if no one else has.

We're all coming to meet each other.
Separated by births and deaths and miles and lives.
But we're all going to meet each other on the roof.

She's from the sunshine state and he's from brooklyn,
and Vegas and Virginia and the great North Wet and somewhere deep in Georgia.
But we're all together now, dining under the setting sun seven floors above
the world and the Upper West side.

Nineteen and fourty seven, but they both love icecream
and there's no denying we're all breathing the same air.
The same sweet seventh floor rooftop air.

It's sweetened, now that we're all together. And milk and honey
seem to flavor this glorious rooftop air.

Sun set and the river keeps flowing and we keep
knowing that we're all in this together.

I'm sure we'll all end up together.
I'm sure that we're all going to live together.

Dante had no idea.

The other night, there was this dream that circles in my head and left me waking nauseous.
I died, I'm not sure how or why I died but I did. And there was a big line of waiting fools and some magical doorway and me. The winding line for thirty flights of spiral stairs. I was anxious, didn't want to wait anymore, just wanted to go in. Up up up the stairs and holding my breath and then a rush of air.

Doors open, rush of air in and I'm in, I'm in Heaven?
Ok, the colors are a little brighter, and my feet feel a little lighter. You know that flying thing you sometimes do in dreams? Well I could do that in Heaven, too.

And it was nice, for a while. Wandering around, it seems like the world wasn't so sick anymore. No gold paved roads, but there were no cracks in the pavement. Everything smelled good. I remember that.

But then I started getting restless, there was something missing. Something I should be doing. People, that's it. I walked in with all these bodies, and was walking alone. Then Joel staggered by me, beer in hand.

I found that odd but didn't think it was enough to rule Heaven out. I tried talking with him, but he was just miserable. A wretch really, mumbling and stumbling from one old car to another.

Things weren't right. The only person I could find in the damned place was a babbling idiot and where was YHWH? Where's the big man? I'm supposed to staring at His feet, soaking up the courage to look into His face. And things were getting dim, there was supposed to be light at all times.

And my feet were getting heavy, the lightness was gone. And Joel slipped off to somewhere else, and I was alone.
And this was not Heaven, It was Hell.

And I shuddered awake.
These are not the things I want to see when I close my eyes.

thomas wolfe and forevers.

It's all running and tumbling around.
And falling and hurting and skint knees and bloody knuckles.

My fingers are bent around his heart so hard, white around the edges.
Refusing to release and let live.

I keep remembering to forget and all that remembering has made you impossible to forget.
But I read all these novels, and know it's all been felt before. And that's comforting, some how.

You're written about a thousand times in a hundred different novels. Crafted into beautiful sentences that paint you uglier and more magnificent than you could ever be.

Magic and everlasting words, sentences that weave stories fit for kings and for me.
I'm always going to have my nose and eyelashes pressed against the pages of a book while the rest of me heads for the clouds.