the creature has noticed me. it has thousands of broken legs on its face and keeps tabs, never wasting an hour without checking in, watching my home grow bigger in the corner. i am a long bodied cellar spider, suspended, inverted beneath the guitar case, just right of the bed frame. food is scarce, but i sense we share this hunger in the humid subterranean habitat. it takes on thinness, shakes at times, makes day into night, flips pages, tele-spells, turns night into day again.

micro-fibrous dust settles on my spinnerets, a twitchy sneeze draws attention, the cruelest of details. while unraveling undaunted one pseudo-day sort of night, a pulse was released comma intent to ****. it came like resolute qualia, something my eight eyes can’t see. the plastic cave, the broken allegory, all ghastly and converging. as soon as the web gets jostled, a switch will summon my stunning epileptic display. i am ready to give it a leg, but only from the calve. it has never come this close.

you wanna take a guess? you wanna take a guess at this? guess nice long and hard. take a second guess if you need one. it’s ok to second guess. in fact, i insist you take another and keep guessing because guessing is smoke. in this tight circle, we’re taking guesses.

i am an educated guesser.

bummed guesses for awhile. bought my first guessing glass one July. play the guessing game all my days and guess my days away. they make guesses into the same thing as candles and its spiritual. it feels like taking an infinite number of guesses in one breath.

your guess is as good as mine.

drop to the next level. it is the doctor’s thesis of guessing. It is conjecture and formality, but with the fractal reasoning of a true American pack of guesses. they’re the guesses at the end of something replete. the last guess you have left.

out of guesses.

There is a string of panic tied to the last guess, which we tuck, flip, hide in the bottoms of cardstock caverns. when the time comes to draw the last straw,

B. there is nothing to guess at but a missing paycheck. These are the only answers we ever get.

A. she is there, all smiles and fresh questions with a bunch of guesses. she is my best guess yet.

you heard me correctly darling when i said i was

going camping in the witherness. look in this bag i’ve already

packed sun strokes, swill trunks, an array of emptying

books and a flashlight that projects white moving dogs.

in the witherness, we stack silent burning gavels, achieving

the balance of a permanent new moon. we are arriving

by cheap chernobyl trucks and we’ll know when we’re there when

the engine dies and we open the hood to find a blanket-less

girl. don’t worry, she is environmental. made of mist.

we stomp on her sisters, **** like holy anorexics,

steady our foreheads on the ancient bark of

the witherness (dark hallways in a house of leaves)

Quiet now. lay your spine on eggshells so that your joints

may hatch asterisk chirp double asterisk something

akin to what asteroids do, but with a murmuring whistle

the only noise you can hear at the edge of the witherness.

Silence is now. The sun is risen 5 hours where you are. It is the deepest twilight here, traffic lights disrupting. My window is playing a videotape of an invisible sunrise. It was directed by viking film students. They included your paintings in the credits. i hate to spoil the ending, but i leave you. The soundtrack was going to be radiohead, but Yorke’s record label yanked it. So silent film. Silent students acting like they never learn for my benefit. If it isn’t already obvious, the film is me. And you’ll never read this letter, as i’m already loading it into the movie reel and projecting it into snowy pine trees somewhere in Canada that i’ve never been.

Previous Lover and Grateful Friend,

An acephalic poet felt the demiurge from a field of orchids and sunlips

Tapped on the shoulder by a nagging crastination -

the immediacy of putting off both before and after now

From the soil grew daymares that bloomed into ultrasight - the undervisible beauty that comes into view when feeling soft red

I was distracted, and retracted

(cw: kidnapping, ****** assault)

being paranoid is just being extra prepared for red dots, laser sights, red lights, blue lights. every

cigarette in the hands of passing strangers is an open flame and I dread like the pavement being burned and tread on, on the pavement, my feet walking

burned on the pavement, my feet tread

the cracks are inside dreading being stepped on

I test the walls by tapping on their shadows and humming over my shoulder, and without moving,

I imagine my escape at a circle of angles and determine the difficulty of each. the shadows merge and produce a man from a faceless corner

a shadow that had questions for me about a circle of angles

being extra prepared and protractor armed I scan and calculate for firearms and ****** features, hands in pockets, sharp objects, the signs of maybe a weak kneecap.

visions of epinephrine heroics, karate out of nowhere, super saiyan strength or sleeper cell ninja

the thoughts that come through tell me to stand my ground

in kind fashion, he asked for directions and left me disarmed

but once the dreams were done, the nightmare crawled out of the exhaust and the shadow grabbed from below

within seconds but feeling the eternal nature of prison cells, I was almost forced into the back seat, where I saw the scratches on the cushions as notches in hell

when the shadow stopped being a shadow I stopped being prepared

prepped and dreaded, treading in a circle of angles, desperately quiet,

the sound of rubbing nylon and heavy breathing to indicate conflict, cries for help escape after I do, looking for blue lights, sharp objects, red boxes and safety nets, threaded

light to knit out the shadows, weak in the kneecap dialing in

“Please give us your current location”

Myles Hall. Miles below, looking for my head in a circle of angles

you are not an impostor

**** those bastardly sons of ******* you are not an impostor

i know that you curl your toes under your shoes

hold your breath before you speak

check your laces twice before you step

out on tightrope 8 miles above ground

when you swallow a sentence and chase it with whiskey

trying not to choke on the sharp edges of “not enough”

your stomach bile will vault through your esophagus

in perfect lingual trapeze

stick the landing with ease and say ta da

say everything except what you need

when you rise from your knees

those itchy words will drop

into the soul of your shoes

with which you curl your toes

hold your breath

and check your laces twice before you remember

that you are not an impostor

in front of you are jesters and clowns

and a circus of whistles, bells, and frozen sounds

your shoes will grow three ******* sizes

because a) the grinch ain’t got **** on you and

b) you can do the Charlie Brown to space funk and

see(c) that you have all the room in the world to move your feet

tumble from your tight rope

let the people around you string together bridges and safety nets

go out to the carnival and win some bottle caps

take the stuffed version of you from the prize rack

and sleep well with it at night