The Guitar

It came with those scratches from all their belt buckles, palm-dark with their sweat like the stock of a gun: an arc of pickmarks cut clear through the lacquer where all the players before me once strummed—once thumbed these same latches where it sleeps in green velvet. Once sang, as I sing, the old songs. There’s no end, there’s no end to this world, everlasting. We crumble to dust in its arms.