Rising each morning,

he finds himself

falling into memory

and its patterned rituals.

Most days do not cohere;

stories slag off as he walks

unsteadily down the stairs.

He does not fragment,

like a shattered mirror,

so much as crumbles

like cheap concrete

into piles of disaggregated

data— isolated numbers 

floating in the air. The dust,

briefly, rises into the sun, 

then settles like a benediction

across a landscape of sin.

He finds comfort in his ruins,

where the darker horror hides

in the ashes of the mundane.

(January 21, 2023)