The Wheel of Smoke and Stars

I'm caught in life's wheel, held by a time that no longer remembers me, and for so long I've cried out to a sky that has forgotten what prayer sounds like. Someone get me off this carousel of smoke and mirrors, out of the blind whirl that grinds the lights into the dust of old dreams. For years I begged to feel nothing, like a dried-up well, and if I had to feel at all, let it pass through me like the wind, as if I were running through the pages of a book sealed with a lock of wax, forgetting, before the final page, the only sentence that still mattered. But today I live on the edge of tomorrow while I'm still here in today, I sneeze long before I smell the flower just beginning to open, I cry out in pain before the mirror shatters into a thousand waters, and say goodbye to people I haven't even met. Take me off this wheel, this endless back-and-forth. Who stole my wonder, along with the worries I let myself forget, my attachment to all that passes, my faith in all that dies? Who took my enthusiasm and left it, like a coin, by the side of the road, who did they give my contentment to, who received my lost devotion? I'm only saying it would be nice to read a book without seeing its ending in the very first line, like a spell broken before it's spoken— even if I'm still bound to this old, silent wheel, even if I'm still devoted, for no reason, to this eternal carousel.