too early 9/9 justwrite

There are numbers on my eyelids, counting down while I sleep in a shallow shell so the trucks grumbling outside my window at four seventeen in the morning cause me to run across highways with nine lanes and wonder why it's so hard to keep from crying out when all you want is silence for a while, crystal champagne flutes beheaded from their stems while a cool breeze traces its despair onto my neck. I expect the worst but only find seeds scattered across my palms. Seeds some day grow more seeds, and I wonder how we can know this and still feel alone, as if everyone else is constantly distracted by something flashy on the horizon in the opposite direction, and sound can only travel backward so your screaming never warns them. A distant voice waits in the doorway and tries to convince you that everything will be all right, but it has poison on its lips and hasn't realized it yet. But there are windchimes, and the only poison I've tasted lately is in the seeds of apples that only want to grow more apples that will hang heavily on tender branches that bow to the wind.