it seems sometimes like this slow-motion cascade of twitches and deformities forms ecosystems on my bedroom floor. i can shift between them, not physically, but tangentially, as if by a switch sitting quietly at the back of my skull. quick cold feel around and i'm in a woodland, leaning against bark that holds enough ridges and depressions to tell an odyssey. ants weave through the bark like they're tunnels. i weave through the trees like they'll never end.

then, from dead leaf to a sand so vast it leaks into the horizon, i am desert, deserted. when you stare long enough at the same sad thing it melts into another plane and you have to learn to affix your gaze to something else. but here, where whats left again sinks into scarcity, you may as well stare into the sun.

someone saw me sitting at the edge of the swamp. i spend most of my time there i think. i name the clusters of moss rubbing up against my ankles, most of them after people i know. or knew - long since has it been decided that if i name a moss-person after you, you are an erstwhile figure, a shadow dragging its imagined weight around the corners of someone else's life.

but no one sees me back sitting at the edge of the bed with my fine coterie of nothings, limbs dangling, body shaped like an accident: where i go to die, over and over and over and...

...people have said before that i have a way with words,
but it's times like these i'd rather do away with them.

Who are you to say the white curtain stains
On a hilltop growing green?

Who are you to paint with such graphite cold
On a white provincial scene?

Who am I to wish for such a thing
Amongst all these eyes unseen?

Who are we to hope for such a sight
For such parted parchment things...

Poem

A blank slate
Is an opportunity