Certain moments move me until I must be everywhere; split myself, nerve particles, into a fountain (fluffing like a pelican) or up a tree trunk (picking at unhurried bark). Refusing to taste a singular air.
Except atop a high rise, dangling by a string of your hair--
careful there.
I might collapse. I must confuse my limbs with yours. Listen to me. You're all that I trust with my skin.
It stains your hands like silly putty - palms collecting newspaper prints - ink in exchange for a lift up the wall.
But the impression is vague, like fever.
I'm faint to recall. Like rain, like a scent not smelled but somehow heard or seen.
Here's to that dream on the back of your hand:
My face, small, smudged - but too fast for love.
It shows up, specific places, I can point them out: plaques of moonburn.
In all spots, pores of vulnerable me, sites of infection, sites of osmosis near the collarbone, clavicle of contagion.
Oh, it would be easy to battle disease. I already fashion my own anesthetic. I crouch down to look gravel in the eye. My knuckles are groundproof - would welcome the scar.
It's not the know, the not-know, the knawing - it's the soft things: the bellies, the couches, the mops of wet hair that I fear. I claw to my corner and try to forget. Your selection of wine. A clear, distant hill. A drunken confession made in confidential silence.
I ought not to focus on space.
Stars cross me, holy, but leave only silhouettes.
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