thirteen claw-marks from that cat on the shaky marble floor
who knows, as it etches itself into a rich mans immaculate masculinity
wiping away my helplessness before it too makes its mark.
i wish they would put their shoes together
left toe touches right toe
thats the only way it can be,
just right in the invisible space in the carbon dioxide collection.
twenty-seven pennies
bitter smelling in the jar which has just reached its peak in age and dust
they are the majority within their glass prison
dignified despite their rust
meaningless in their respite,
soon to be obsolete, as he points out constantly.
oh, how the world changes.
and i have only been conscious for a tiny tick on the clock.
now, this old man, with his inflexible spectacles
lacks the view in his birds eye and peripheral
but probably considers my shadow a bad omen.
he shivers in the wake of such an evil.
my teeth click against each other, electrified with the being of that evil.
the setting is white,
or rather, a version of it, decrepit with the plaque of a pattern all too familiar.
this is my dream room.
where i find myself often
and where often i am a stranger
my letters of wonder which i design on the walls, on the solar filled floor to ceiling glass
backwards of course, in hopes that someone might read them,
have turned tired and cold,
no longer illustrate their longing
nor their greed for adrenaline
nor their want for the world.
black and chicken scratch
stationed among the randomized pauses and the seemingly infinite crack in the wallpaper
might it widen its mouth for me
as it did so slowly
so lustfully
for her?
how possible is the other side,
when the world that you breathe in suffocates you only long enough until you remind yourself in silence
to breathe again.
imprisonment feels kinder when you can see out,
even though they can see in.
shuttered away, i build upon my layers until my mind can multiply itself
sneak out its smoky tendrils and climb along the terrace,
and wail
and scream
and scream until you could hear it down the street
until each person ceased their hearts
in between beats they meet the sound of a consciousness so distinctively torn they can’t help but reconcile with their own.
but i will never reach them that way
as i did not reach her
as i did not reach you.
i wear the glass, a translucent suit of sea green and nursery blue
each time they touch me, allow their fingers to feel my life
to feel my death
to feel the imperfect atoms which make up my aloneness, the invisible filth-
they are pricked and sliced open
the way grass does on bare skin only to be noticed hours later
in me, they see themselves
and the hatred only
grows.