your kodak moment

Divulged through your favorite courier, our
mutual broker (her shoes and purse mismatched
but hey, it was 40% off retail), your
concentric joint contrition.

Today's subtext: thick as the brick of
we did the best we could.

I pull apart the sealing wax on said tired
plea bargain. This fetch is empty, darling.
I shake out no jewels of awareness or
compassion. No soul searched regret.
Only the faint vapor of inevitability,
infected with ego dust. I see an iron fist
big as a ham now stuffed with blackbirds
and sentiment drippy in its sniffle.

I turn away from East in slow motion.
I once pined for the Kodak moment.
But I assumed the wrong assumption.
That others hungered for the awful truth, too.

What is often self evident to the world
is sometimes painfully wrought in one's
atypical soul- one long, slow, micro scaled
unfolding. Like water steeping tea leaves,
tannins creeping wordless through sky
color (just before dawn) as
birds roll out of sleep and narcissus
unwraps its paper thin countenance in fog.

Good intentions are not enough here in my
country’s fallout. Their half-life, you see, is
tenacious. It still burns the frayed offerings
of my best efforts. My best everything.

So it’s time to burn down the barn,
your onlys. Your ifs. And sweep

myself wide open and darkly apart
into a staggering new article of faith,
released from the spell.

Echo broken.

It’s raining today in the shallows. By August
I live in richly painted rooms of
belonging neither one of you may enter.

Karina Allrich © 2005-2008