the world has taken away all of my poems. i have nothing to do but regress — sit still as november peels itself away. lo, i crawl into myself; all traces of anything human are left to dissipate, like a ghost sliding gracefully in faint, flaxen light. mute and unheard, i ache to unsee patches of my unraveled skin, so painfully human. so painfully visible. inside, i twist in painful longing to fall into obscurity — to be locked away like a tiny bone in a closed fracture, to perish in a sleepy seaside town, to fade like a poetic conundrum in a motionless, lilac dream.

come tomorrow, someone else in my body awakes with the same exhausted eyes. same despondent breaths. and i'm left to cling inside my skin, to wander indefinitely — a deboned greek kore, a mouthful of abstract poems, a mystery moving backwards to unsolve itself.

lo, the echoes: i cling inside my skin — walk beneath my skin. i am safe. safe. i’m more bearable somewhere out of sight. i’m more myself somewhere out of reach.