You’re asleep I should be too I’m not okay Nor are you But days with you feel better Dreams with you feel sweeter You give feeling to a gray world Thank you
meanwhile it's my lunch hour -- the sun burns the cinderblocks pink 12:40 on a thursday with sawdust in my hair and a piece of lead pinched between forefinger and thumb fighting the sudden onset feeling of vivid panic i'm obliterated by the sense of being alone and lost outside the plexus of purpose
my docile body is being stretched open i am churning unsexed and weak weeping on the steel edge of hysteria half gouged and puttering beneath this burden of butterflies in my chest the girl is a great distance away but maybe she'll notice my plumage rising and receding like a brittle sail on a dark green sea or hear my cells test the very limits of elasticity diverging terribly into flamboyant aqueducts and humming on the wind like the plow tractor trumpeting in a far-away field
she is a fawn lying on a summer picnic blanket sprawled on the rolling meadow as if it were a beach a genuine beauty in the white of the sun's light wearing a pair of reflective sunglasses holding her face puckered up expecting a kiss and a delicate fire surges through me my eyes are blinded by the green grass radiant all around her and my pulse thunders inside my ears longing to be immersed with her in safety ripped up by a lust to be accepted and free and folded together softly against the hard world
i am being hollowed out into electric rivulets by the painful consciousness of my isolation by the broiling heatwave of july against the longest winter of my life my heart aches in my front shirt pocket waiting on my phone to light up or ring and so i fill my ***** glistening torso with what i hope is a lethal dose of papaya-coconut water
no child is spared from your gaze you watch me reel and roast soaking in brine, save me from the ocean or a shark - i won’t look you in the eye, only a glance only a furtive glance i’ve seen you all before father? lover? god?