a blot of ink spilled
across a sheet of paper like
  leaves in a book
   perched on a wooden
    shelf threatening to teeter
     over and spill on creaking
      floorboards in a wooden
     house sinking deeper and
    deeper into the depths of
   blotted synapse and
  leafless trees spreading
  roots into concrete and tearing
   out and through these concrete veins
     and through these concrete lungs of mine

I wish to kiss the mountain with my feet
And burrow tight within its frozen maw
To craft a trail amidst an angry sleet
To puncture frozen shell with metal claw

I wish to hold the ocean in my reach
And drift amongst a swirl of yellow tangs
To float and flip and light a sunken beach
To dart away from rows of gnashing fangs

O how I wish to find my world of light
And sleep within the cradle that I've missed
To shed this sack of flesh and free my blight
To feel her soothing hold and once be kissed

Encased in flame, my body will rescind
Ascending to my mother in the wind

The morning after is strangely calm.
    "Morning is blissful because it has
no memories."
    says the sylph, rifling through her satchel.

    "It only thinks about the
         future, what it wants to do,
            where it wants to go.

            "Then the evening comes,
                     who remembers
                       the weight of
                          the world.
            Sometimes it hides behind clouds and
                                                          cri­es."

    "And of the night?"

    "The night, knowing the sorrows of her siblings,
     casts a veil over
     everyone else.
     She gathers all the suffering she can and swallows it
     whole."

    "Does it hurt?"


                                                        ­                           "Sometimes."

poko poko poko
poko poko poko poko
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