Losing Callus

It is after midnight and the parade, the idea of it, kicks my legs under the table. I know better than to stop for so long, the blood changes for the heart remembers, and punches hard in my chest to think of leaving again. Sleep? How silly. It is nothing to draw a sharp knife over and over across the hand. The body, the heart, the arch and heal all grow callus, grow accustomed to being without a tender comb of the hand. In the shower I see my restraint, my conditioning peel away from my feet to be lost in water, in the circle of the thirsty drain. Of course, of course, this is all of it. Birth pains. Dry laugh. Rather a push start to a laugh that won't turn over because of this fist in my throat that has me mouthing a index knuckle as remedy.
I have played one song, one song over and over until my heart is wet with it. Replay is pressed again. I can do a bear growl that makes the neighbor's lap dog hide behind the tree and whimper, yet plug me in to 2007 society, a landmass that I swim separate from and feed me too many emotions and I drown. It passes, given the sweet elixir of time, and it all passes. Hey, it all passes right? Outside of the weight of the sun furnace I walk in I have been shining for months. It is good to have a wet eye now and then, just for a bite, a remembering. Yes that is it, a remembering. It is all a women in the river walking toward me, singing over all that has floated past.