i am in a place unfamiliar to me.
the city creaks and groans when i move.
i am told that the world
is the biggest and oldest vessel, that
there have been millions of feet before mine
to tread here. surely, the world croaks
for them too. still, i am guilty for trespassing.
people pass the windows and it does not
occur to them that anyone could be looking from
above.

most people are busy with things
going on outside of their head.

the work is gone. the buzz has died.
i am being forgotten again,
as they do when the seasons change.
alone, i am reacquainted with those
twin sisters of discomfort,
being full of potential and
starved for ideas.

there are pieces of me now,
scattered across the country,
i left them behind in the move
on purpose, for ease.
the grief sets in a week later,
when my body realizes how little
there is left of what was, before,
a life already empty.

the house is in boxes. i am
shuffling them around in
different formations.
i clear a path, no real progress made,
then i step outside to smoke.
the city groans, sways, but remains upright.
i balance on the concrete steps, watch cars
swim by. the world chokes with me. we cough
together but i am entirely alone.

i am drowning.

the work is becoming me.

i am not living
moment to moment
but task by task. my phone is
a long list of numbers and names,
and they all need me now,
now, now,
and yesterday and tomorrow,
but i rank them,
because life is a long
list of ranking and doing,
but the ranking is a chore
already, and i get tired,
my feet sink up to
the **** of my ankle,
and i'm no further ahead
than i was before,
the same spot, just
a few inches lower,
a few pounds heavier.

i am in no condition
to write.
so i smoke, i
let the spirit run
all through me,
and through him,
i find the second
mask of mine that
loves to write letters.

i am drowning
in letters.

the list swells,
shifts, squirms
in my hand.
every screen begs
me to write to it.
and everyone's got
a different medium,
language, favor,
passion and preference.

i am thanking and apologizing.
i am scheduling and dismissing.
i am losing steam trying to
wear all these hats; i
am sinking, i
am sinking, i am
sinking, i am sinking,
i am fifteen people at
once, all singing and
stepping on themselves,
i am so noisy, and grateful.
i am so sickeningly small.

i am drowning.
i am grateful. i
am swelling; i am
building an image;
i am becoming. it
is so uncomfortable.

it is night when i finally
sit to paint. these are the
things that sell and yet i
feel so much like a glass
jar already stuffed full
of change. nothing to
show for it yet though.
so i put the
ink in a big
circle on the
canvas and i
crawl inside it
and it is warm
and soft and
unforgiving
and it doesn't
expect a thing
from me but
color.

wake up, get kissed on the head.
one-two, just like that.
if the day must be what he makes it,
this is how he’s got to start it out.
it’s got to be gentle. and genuine.
warm and earnest. it’s got to be all
of these things without hesitance
and without fail, because this,
and only this,
is how paper men can keep
themselves comfortably distant
from the betrayal of being cut.

there are many betrayals wrought down
upon the fragile and feeling man;
many of which he has imagined,
or predestined. maybe wished for.
it is more comfortable to admit failure
through a burst lip.

he must be cured of this notion,
radicalized only by love.
awakened by seeing his body treasured,
read.  he is no longer a napkin, in love,
but an almanac . no longer a paper man
but a hefty recollection
of his plentiful passing paper peers.

an accidental intimacy is committed
between the right-now me
and the me-a-few-minutes-ago
as i slip onto my body,
(made cold by the air of the room,)
the warmest shirt i have ever felt,
soft and hot with the heat of
my own body
that i had already forgotten.

two me's converge, here.
i wrap my arms around myself.

i forgive my old self for all he has done to me
yesterday
because look what he would do for me
today,
he would keep himself warm
so that one day he would be cold
so that one day i could pick this hot shirt up
and wear it.

we waltz, we dance,
until the heat calms under the fan,
and then we are just one man
and i catch myself missing him.

taking the trash out one night,
i begin to fantasize about my own disappearance.

with the way it's raining, loud against the
metal of the house,
of the car,
of the little, singing bud in my ear,
i think to myself,
i don't think anyone would have seen this coming.

i find my place between the mazda and the bins,
walk there to the beat of this song which sounds
so much like an insistentlyapproaching bootfall,
and the bag is heavy as i swing it up and in,
and i return inside for the second.

right, the second.

i think about the documentary after i'm gone,
when they do the re-enactment.

and he walked inside again, mom will say and
dab at her eyes, for the second bag. i saw him, saw him go.

out of focus, the false me will wooshslowmotion with
a grocery bag of scraps around her and out the door
and then he will be gone forever
and he will have been taken so much for granted
and he will have incredible ratings.

this bag is smaller.
it takes no effort to toss,
and i latch the lid of the bin closed
with bungee rope like needy restraints
and i slip through the gate,
unfollowed,
close it behind me,
untaken,
up the steps beneath the awning which shouts
with rain,

and when i enter the house,
it is empty and sleeping
and dark and nothing.
there is no one to miss me in here.

(suddenly, very presently,
very cosmically aware of my
body,)

i find myself upset about
the prospect, the
inexpressible and
inescapable fact,
that as i use what i have,
it will disappear.

what an awful
thing to say.
i look at my hands.

i will have to
ration, i think.

i sit, i look
at these hands,
present and
cosmic.

i guess i just
can't love anything
anymore, i think.

i wiggle my fingers
and they fade.

yeah, i guess that's
what that means.

it's been cloudy for so long,
she thinks, as her head falls back,
squinting up at the tear in the sky,
she almost doesn't recognize the city
without its hat on.