Click clack of train tracks.
Space.
Closing and creating.
Space.
Vision blurred by the translucency of my eyelids.
Space.
I proceed,
Blind, clawing at the warmth of the air that caresses my skin
Warmth that I want from elsewhere
Your warmth...
I must settle.

Anxiety builds.
I see nothing, hear nothing, still I proceed,
Blood pumping
Lub dub
I take a step
Lub dub
Another step
Lub dub
Hands still stretched, nothing. Silence. Space.

It’s coming.
I feel it, the initial throatiness
Converting to heat
****** heat,
Pressing into beads of fluid that trickle down my cheek

My arms follow suit, then my legs,
They become acquainted with the earth,
seeking comfort in its stability
and reveling in its tangibility

Marco!  One minute you seemed perfectly healthy,
the next you were sprawled on the floor by the drinking
    fountain
like a sack of potatoes.

(How reliable our machinery is usually--
just think if your car ran 60 years nonstop!....)

But, Marco, seeing you there on the floor,
I knew we live at the mercy
of neurons and corpuscles
(our own little wires and pistons)
and when they stop, we stop.

your cephalic is now distal from my axial
posterior when you used to be anterior
missing our deep talks, instead of superficial ones

your orbital region all but glances at my mammaries
tilting your mental up and away from me
ignoring my lateral buccal

I miss our manus's clenched together at the median
your pollex rubbing my digital
palmer's together

my thoracic lunges at you
trying to grip onto you using all my pericardium
my umbilical region hurts

My friend thinks they only need someone to keep them warm during the winter.
If that were true, then I ask simply, “Why do we shiver?"

In the cold, our bodies warm themselves; the muscles jive and twitch.
I assure you, it's not because we have a scratchable relationship itch.

Love is not and can not be a last resort, a temporary relief, an emotion that lasts only but a season.
It thaws the permafrost of life, it's beyond physical warmth, and that's not something you can reason.

As blood drips,
Pain grips,
Sharp stings and bubbly feelings,
But it is one of the normal dealings.

Antiquity was waiting to breathe
And awaiting the moisture of lungs.

A hole, eyeball wide, offered just a peek;
Along with an ancient mote,
Which flew from eternity into sight.
Remarkable things were seen!

In the heat the buzz was slight.  
As was the bite.  But, ultimately,
The fevers started burning in the night
(For after all, the cobra had eaten the yellow canary).

How your coverings and remains sparkled like the sun!
Thousands of years of hiding suddenly undone.  

But, we all rot together, eventually eaten.

~ for Angela Scuteri ~

Cancer cells bloom and open
their capsules split apart
and spit the pips
on the red tide.