Turn left at the stop sign

It left my body
like a slow release of cigarette smoke through parted lips.
I blink my eyes, life goes by in the blink of one.
The flame of the candle flickers,
Green wax and the hum of the heat in my ears.

We paint our souls so that they’re colourful,
we fill in the spaces where the air seeps through
those spaces that are black and white,
because everyone wants to be significant.

They told me: “If you’re grey on the inside
you’ll drift through life like a ghost on water with no reflection
and not even the moon will shine on you.”

I cry out into the night and my tears raise the ocean.
The world is heavy with sighs,
the ground heaves and shudders
and is dirtied by sand-stained feet.

I’m walking on the tired earth with a tired heart
with heavy arms and a stretched soul.
Invisible hands have pulled my head in a million directions,
and I have lost focus.

The tears and the hope and the madness have evaporated into the air
and formed clouds of quiet melancholy that hang over the earth
like dirtied sheets on a clothes line,
blowing back and forth in the wind.