Rest Assured

Your clothes will cling to your body in the rain
and hold your frame together by the seams
while you look up, and accept the sky
as your umbrella; the rain’s in your eyes
and your hair is tangled at the back of your head
and you can see.
You will wake up one morning and find
you haven’t touched your face in a week
and it raises and drops in places like the mountain where
you first felt you could live in one place forever;
like the valley where you first had the space you need to think,
and the light comes off you anyway.
Your world will shrink into the grey things its made of:
your apartment like a hospital waiting room,
your job that no one will remember in six months
where you move about hardly aware that you’re moving at all;
the people thrust into your path by circumstance,
all waiting at a perpetual bus stop and no more acquainted,
and all you can smell is must and cigarette smoke.
You will realize one day that you can leave
with nothing to your name,
and you will fly like something not from this earth
and then you will lose everything.
You will carry things inside you forever that will
rub together like blisters and make your stomach shake,
and they will never lead to anything else or
stop being what they are.
You will love her, and she will be more important than the stars,
than the quiet close of day, and you will never touch her face.
You will always be left behind even if your knuckles are white and
your hands are hard from holding on. Hold on anyway.