Residue

I forget a lot of what I try to just remember.
The awful empty stages are covered in the residue
of a million slow debatable performances.
The clown’s makeup melts off under
the hot lights that beam down
like they are being stretched across
the field of view, and only you could
notice that the lion tamer didn’t have a jaw.

The cup of soda is cold in my hand and
condenses water out of fragments of the air.
The turbine in the river pulls the color
off her shirt in their T.V. that they are watching
out of boredom and a sense of something lost.
They pay the cost of all their unhealthy choices
at the convenience store they pass
along their way to count the footsteps
to the bar.

The feeling of new songs that are almost
better than the old ones, when you didn’t
think they’d ever get as good,
is understood as an impossible occurrence.
However, there is always hope for a miracle,
and I am the underdog of another night
without the next day being something
else entirely. So chew on the edge
of your fingernails, and watch
as like the waning moon,
they wither into smaller jagged crescents.