we all return to rust.

all the lives i've never lived are doomed to evaporate, like early morning fog under the wistful gaze of the sun. star-crossed natural phenomena. my memories are stored in boxcars. my heart thunders down the rails and leaves a trail across the lonely fields of the midwest, deafened by industry and cricket-song. a moment of clarity as i look upon the sludge they dump in the river, and for a fleeting second my ambitious heart returns to me, nearly uncontainable within the stagnant shell of my former selves. pick up thousands of new loves just to drop them in the gutter as the choking low returns. sometimes i look at my hands in search of their memory, but my self-perception is firmly tied to the present. never a map to a destination, just a train destined to go off the rails (again and again...) there's nothing to do but let the rust drag me down via sodden-clay feet. i think i climb trees to escape it, but they, like me, are of the earth. i fear that i have also put down roots here, and with every day they creep further under sidewalk cracks; i think they're doomed to pollution from industry. or maybe i'm a creeping vine in desperate search of sunlight at the expense of living things bigger and better than i am, parasitic. regardless of form, winter arrives dull and totalitarian to wipe out all things green.