Pages rippling,
Quickly pushing through the years
My mind is a casino shuffling machine
Rapid fire, every card is
Every face bleeding through
Anchored memories, subsurface stillness
Reality is the crooked blade--

I now realize
I was always looking for
Everything that wasn't them
Different hair, different eyes
Why are they all blurring together

Old slides on a movie screen
Staring back at me.
Vindictive, hostile, blaming.
I was scrambling for the ideal of novel,
New and transposed.

Enough to break me down into molecules,
Toss me into atoms
Throw my essence against the starstuff and dark spaces between--

But there is no ripple effect.

No unseen unclothing me.

The faces keep bleeding through
I keep wading, riffling, sifting through the sands of time

It falls;
Between and all
around me.