the truth is

even if i could break through the velvet layers
and reach through the summer haze,
the heat saturating the world with color so vivid
even my perfect sight cannot
focus on a single entity
and it all twists into one perfect blur of deep brown,
truth is, i wouldn't stop it.

truth is, i used to wish that i could reach up into the sky and
past all of the clouds and stars and planets
and find the sooty corners of a seemingly endless space
where treasures were waiting just
for me, but now
as i squint through the muggy vapor and watch as colors
forget their names in a dance of uniform harmony,
i wish to collapse into the earth
and crawl into the empty spaces left by shadows and profiles,
listening to the whisper of silence
and find myself drifting away in a granite lullaby.

and the truth is,
even those who leave their lives engraved in stone become sand,
and no one cares that they are washed away
and smoothed down into miniscule grains that no longer make a difference in the world
but long to be remembered as the boulder originally hewn from, and no longer
exists.
so i let the heat haze vaporize the colors and
turn everything into a chestnut
haven and i sink knee deep into the ground
and i listen to the silent voices of stone
because their grains of sand still have stories to tell.

truth is, i am a grain of sand
hewn by God from a granite boulder,
part of the earth,
reduced to a shadow of a memory.