Ash Wednesday! "Windowsills"

By Ash Catcher

The distant park
Was a graveyard of dead stars.
Each streetlight a system of worlds,
So many lives between each mote of light,
Indistinguishable in their unique love,
Bespoke hate, and the drama of the modern age.

Drunk laughter behind transparency
Double doors. Another hotel balcony,
Another cloud behind the canopy
Of marijuana eyes
To unsettle me from the crowd.

She points out, when you look closely
You can see the disorder
Amongst all constellations
Of life and love and litter;
Of discarded Coke cans
And temporary highs.

I wonder what would happen
If we all stood still.
If we all took one moment
To observe the motion
That unfolds beneath
Our static windowsill.
She says this is not a scene
To the bullshit of a present mind,
More to joke at the incompletion of it all. 
Of one thousand to-do lists;
A million reasons why I can't, or I’ll do it tomorrow. 
You should just stay inside. [ One alter says] 

She says you can see the human swell
Of ignorance, our city lights
Blotting out the stars
In a black ocean of broken politics
And irretrievable fault lines-
Divisions between us all. But I think I see a finish line. 
Lives twisted with semi professional smiles
This is just my day job but at NIGHT I am a… 
And eyes lit with stunning indifference.

We are just waiting for our turn to speak. 

Still, I have felt charity, and warmth
On the doorstep of lunatics, and fascists.
I have read the love of life
In faces of those who gave up.
I have recounted countless artists
Who saw beauty in an empty glass. 
In moments that precisely lacked it.

I have spent too many nights
In anaesthesia,
Fleeing each instance of feeling
And terror; all the tremors
That tell me I am still alive.

Continued to stare at the lights
Long after the voice
And the laughter inside had gone.
I always struggled to leave the party. 

Heard waves in the traffic.
It drowns out the domestic violence that I have been hearing. 
A world so large, so expansive,
It can never truly sleep.
Every broken heart,
Every war-torn land,
Every promotion,
Every one-night stand.

I wonder what would happen
If we all stood still.
If we all took one moment
To observe the motion
That unfolds beneath
Our static windowsill.

If we all took one moment
To recover our loss.
The wars that we won,
The feelings, forgot.
The hell we retain;
Our paradise, lost.