Article voiceover
Beyond the cold bounds of the last station you find yourself alone with what came of your choices / the prayer you make again / (or were you always) / on your knees / to be relieved of a burdened conscience / lighter better kinder / follows the realization that it would always come to this that the house of your hidden enemies would always be populated with shadows that spend their dark hours contemplating how best to keep you silent and sorry so you know / you brought this on yourself / far and away and after the words lose their meaning and the spark of intimacy fizzles into farce and what remains is the rolling record of your disappointment / you only know you’ve tried and failed and now could I have done more or or or was I just the child of slaves signed away by the invisible hand of the one who’d eat his sons and sigh out their bones so you know / you’ve always known / a truth heavy as stone / that you were born under the weight of this fathering shade predestined to be last and cast to labor without freedom or joy as the world / if it sees you at all / considers clever whatever means to displace you even as you are celebrated and more in castigation / constant and cruel and the measure of your mid life envied and pitied in equal measure / what a joke / whatever that force loud approaching like a plague of locusts behind you / before you a brushfire / that cannot be reasoned away / no magic withstanding against it / as it pulls you into its orbit / and will not be stopped / it cannot be
lovely!
Your voice—written and spoken—was made for this.