Ten hours of the blades screaming

Ten hours of the blades screaming

and now the silence in the car

is a weight I can’t quite lift.

The steering wheel is gritty.

I look in the rearview mirror

at lashes heavy with the mill,

a fine yellow frost

on a man who’s mostly still.

My knuckles are maps of dry riverbeds.

The powder settles in the deep lines

where the skin gave up and split,

glowing gold in the streetlamps,

making a monument out of the grit.