Sometimes a song will grab me and won’t release me for a while. My mind dwells within the world the words create and my heart is strung with the chords and bruised by its rhythms.

Sometimes for hours, other times for days, I walk with the ghosts that wisp silently through my actual surroundings like animated painters, augmenting my life with their philosophies and poetries.

It’s a wonder I’ve not fallen into their trance entirely and forgotten to keep stepping, watching for cars while listening for truth, seeing grief, smelling trust, fidelity, or hope. It never lets up slowly. The song wrestles my mind until it releases it, suddenly.

I’m no Jacob, no wrestler with the divine, but I know a kind of limp that slows my pace and marks my cadence. Each poet leaving a sore reminder in the hip of my soul.