"I bash them hard against my skull."
Every evening I walk up the hill; I take the steep sidewalk leading alongside a high, crumbling wall.
I listen to the classical station, strings here, static crescendo.
Lines of cars move past, as silent and unreal as ghosts.
I watch my shoes one after the other, and look up at the bare branches that reach out over the flaking wall.
I should know what kind of trees they belong to, and I should know what stones have been placed over what.
But I know that these are the same sort that were used to make the gravestones, chalky black and sandy brown: weathered away.
And I know that roots are always uplifting, forever tilting and ruining perfection.
Silent, in darkening time and polluted thoughts. As static as the world in which I walk those nights.
I forget there are people around me, dead to my left, phantoms to my right. Or I might have it all turned around.