Rust

The rust pours out my fingers
smearing orange, in cranky stripes
across the page. Religiously trying
to write, as the books say, whenever
I can and waiting for words.

I'm sure a white page is resting
inside my chest and when I breathe,
a rhythmic curling allows the stray,
word, a short one vowel sentence,
to escape, perhaps out one nostril
or squeezed out in a series of sighs.

My attention tries to focus
but these words, this malicious
whispering. Is that a soft slurred s?
An almost impossible to hear a?
Said only once then out the heater
vents and into the hard, morning
light bouncing off the red eyes of
the stopped cars ahead.