i have put up facades
and feigned a greater confidence than i could ever possess,
i have touched the poverty in lines of poetry
and tasted the ******* of lame stanzas.

i have put less thought
into greater things.

absorbing the warmth of smiling
through ****** osmosis
and
keening away carbon in short- and shallow breaths


but
i have never seen again what transpired  
when i watched
the paper girl
fold herself into pieces of origami-like lovers as cold sheets of fragile fibers
carefully bent around
waxy parchment
she sailed around the room like a paper airplane,
thin, creased skymachine with wings bent back and nose weighted with all the promise
of an old penny she might have found in her pants pocket