At the Broken Point

At the Broken Point

Do you feel the weight of the stars on your back
     And the pressure inside your skull?
Do you feel the air grow thick like a stew
     And the world flood in through your skin
     As infinity shrinks to a speck
     And eternity ends with a thought?
I hear it: the imperceptible breaking of a toothpick
     On the other side of the house.
I hear it: the sharp snapping of a frozen twig in the snow
     On a mountaintop miles away.
I hear it: the brittle cracking of a thin piece of slate
     On the long cracked concrete driveway
     Of a house I used to live in
     Years and years and lives ago.
I hear it in all of the beats of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a heap of broken bricks;
I feel it in all of the sighs of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a temple’s fallen walls.

Image credit: Hamed Saber, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.