I chose to deny I was running
in a circle - around now
I'll start ignoring the ground

under my feet is red and
still damp enough to preserve
my lone footprints over the many
I brought with me before -

under my feet is full of
bones and broken shields and
furrows like scars in the earth
where my fingers fit perfectly -

under my feet is a number
and it's one, and so am I staring
across too many skulls for one
body.

I walk straightened, slowly and
forward, and I know.

Two mosquitoes fly buzzingly
around my head with
perpetually aggravating grace.

One of them is you.
The other is an errant
thought, an unwanted
distraction, a piece
of myself.

A mistake in the pattern.
I crush one of them
under my hand.

Occasionally I manage
to glimpse someone
I can never know

in the odd tilt of
one word or
the reflections on your glasses

and I wonder.