I blot people onto me, just to buff them away. Soakin em, and pressin em on.
Dabbin, pressin, soakin, like temporary tattoos.
Easy to apply, and pretty to look at.
Fun to show off, without any commitments, and then I just let em peel away after some time.
After their bright pigment fades, or their adhesive fails, I just rub em off.
Scratch em with my fingernails sometimes, when I get impatient.
Rub, scratch, off. Now, right now. I’m tired of lookin at you, feelin you on my skin.
I wore you for a bit,
Now it’s time for a new one.
Rub, scratch, dab, press, soak, press again again again.
Skin red, dry skin rub rub dab dab dab peel peel dab peel.
And then,
the ones I like the most, the most beautiful, the most vibrant,
color, color, color.
Purple, green.
purple purple
Purple,
are the ones I try to keep the longest,
they’re always the quickest to fade,
and to peel,
and to fail.
Fail fail fail, come unglued.
Keep em out of the sunlight, outta the wind. In the dry. But they peel.
Peel peel peel, fail.
They fail.
And then,
I can’t find others quite like em. So I press on any old picture. Any color.
Gray, red, yellow, blue. Not quite right, no blue, no citron, no salmon.
Not quite purple enough.
Not quite green.
Not quite, never quite the same.
The same purple, the same green.
Just soak soak soak soak,
Press. Peel.
Until, again, something might feel right.

A word gathering dust on my internal junk shelf,
Inseparable, it would seem, from my ego.
Assuredly it seems just a threat to my health;
It's a surefire harm to my heart, this I know.
But once given the chance to examine my state,
As impossible as it seemed to let go,
I saw glimpses of wisdom, redemptions of fate,
Which swore to this word’s worth, its quo.
For when read alone, on a page in my mind,
The “him” was the syllabic gong that rang twelfth.
But I took a fresh gaze, and upon my collate
Saw its syllabic partner alone; saw the “self.”
My “self,” I then saw, was discovered through “him;”
Made naked, and shivering, and new.
He’d unveiled hottest passions, and fears, with great stealth.
So “him” I can thank, now the word’s split in two.

Driven apart by an unlikely shim,
I have his remains, but see more clearly my “self.”
The dust I will likely now brush off my shelf,
For uttering the loveliest elision since “him.”

Her, the cynosure,
Once having lilted into perspective,
Is flawed.

By the late fall,
I hope you recall
My eyes.