Paralytic Response

We’ve dreamt these unopened phases of the moon,
these covenants of silence where our words once
tried to dwell,

but we cannot bridge the distances with such frail
efforts as these, the hands we hardly move from
our sides as the moment passes, the critical time
fades away and we are left having failed to try,
desolated by our own paralytic response to the
thing we hoped so hard to capture,

and all the unopened mail on the kitchen table,
these quorums of unfulfillment, these methods
by which we avoid our lives and instead abide
in the chill crucible of detachment—

they pickle the juice within us and leave us
husks, prisoners to time spent trying not to,
hoping that the journey would somehow
take place with our feet rooted firmly to
the sad, familiar ground we’ve always known,

and we’ve grown to almost love the disappointment,
the loathing as we push all our hopes away in
a deepening wind of wasted breath, too
old now to remark well and truly on the
news of the day, too old for our shop worn
traveling shoes, ancient folk in the clothes
of children, our vampiric dreams spiraling
ever backward to those jumping-off points
when we sought to act, when we ought to
have done so, but were weighted down
so heavy with our freight of doubt and
apathy that we could scarcely raise a
hand in the direction of our own dreams.