There is little blood
            left in my fingers,
and I admit that
            my toes are turning blue, and though we were warned of such things happening,
it still makes me uneasy,
            as if their appendages have broken free of the old-fashioned mysteries and
set out to live a new life among the jays and sparrows.

            Is it true that all glass is a mirror?
I’m not sure, I studied the humanities, or to put it another way
            I’m not sure of anything
outside of heat and the evaporating
            solitude that robs us of the loneliness and innocence
that permeates animals and children.

So it is that I request you be still
            and quake silently in the dark noons of the garden,
bestow your autumn hands on the dim odors pervading the curtains
            the affairs of a monstrous tragedy are the bedtime stories we want to hear repeated.
The fawning fever dream of a new possibility,
            spiraling vision
inviting flames
            into the habitual
such that
            burns are inevitable
and the scaly skin
            that’s a daily reminder,
another part of the routine
            another fancy lotion to remember
grieve! grieve!
            the quiet solemnity of drug store aisles,
faded UVs and blinking
            ads, abutting the space between
human need and such deviance as industry and organization.
            There are finally more living than dead, now.
                        it’s fine
I’ll only seek recourse if the rest of things turn out more boring, seeing how I couldn’t celebrate my victories, anyway, it seemed absurd to mourn my defeats.

Does it really matter?
Matter (n) - the substance of which a physical object is composed

Does it? (really matter?)
        It it it

What is it? (they say, “what is it?”)
        It (p) - that one —used as subject or direct object or indirect object of a verb or object of a preposition usually in reference to a lifeless thing

It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King.

It (also know as Stephen King’s It) is a 1990 American ABC two-part psychological drama miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen from Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name.

Woh (English: It) is a Hindi language Indian television horror-thriller series which aired on Zee TV in 1998. It is an adaptation of the 1990 American TV miniseries It.

It, retroactively known as It Chapter One, is a 2017 American supernatural horror film based on Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name.

It Chapter Two is a 2019 American supernatural horror film and a sequel to the 2017 film It, both based on the 1986 novel by Stephen King.

John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and *** offender known as the Killer Clown who assaulted and murdered at least 33 young men and boys.

John Wayne was an American, too.

John William Gacy is caught in endless cycles of reincarnation, but you thought I was talking about William H. Macy.

They say that history does not repeat itself, but that it often rhymes.

Mark Twain said that. Mark Twain was also an American.

Mark Twain didn’t actually say that. Mark Twain didn’t say a lot of things.

John Wayne isn’t actually John Wayne. He’s Marion Morrison.

Mark Twain isn’t actually Mark Twain. He’s Samuel Clemens.

Stephen King is just Stephen King. (but also Richard Bachman, and John Swithen, and Beryl Evans.

The palm tree's fronds have been painted a pale amber by the sun, flaxen hair hanging wearily from a drooping trunk. We often talk of the heat like it's going away, like an inconvenience. We often don't have much else to say and it does a fine job of filling the air. We often talk of the heat in proud tones, like shaking our fists at the sense of something that's ephemeral, like we can intimidate it, us, with our stubbornness and arrogance. Maybe we will this time.
        The worms are burnt into the patio, unable to cross the concrete desert before becoming charred shadows, offerings to our lifestyle, unmoving grandeur on the path to dirt. Though, under the earth they continue to be held in the sway of inherited machinations, waiting for us - or more accurately, waiting for anything.

Bloodied band-aids lying on the sidewalk, a million little masterpieces lost to forgetfulness, or distraction. Isn't it always that way? Isn't it funny how brand names become synonymous with the product itself? They say you shouldn't deal in absolutes. It's good to operate in the conditional. It's good to survive. Isn't it funny that I was thinking, "It's not a band-aid, it's an adhesive bandage, band-aid is a brand name", instead of, "why the **** are there so many bloodied band-aids on this corner?" It told me something about myself - what, exactly, I am not sure - but I could quickly say with certainty that it didn't really matter.
        The light turns, the cars stop, I begin to cross the street and notice a bloodied band-aid stuck to my sole. It's the best advertising for band-aids that I've ever seen.

I see you. You, wishing to be back there. A prophet now,
then
you would already see everything
ahead
of you. Being just in time you would see fear in their faces, but you wouldn't be able to sympathize.

You would ask questions that you did not want answered, but would speak aloud so that time could record your inquiry. Falling back to caverns
deep within your sinuses, you would taste
the mycological networks,
and
realize that it is hardly more than a pattern.

To go back is to mourn the death of
every version of yourself. Fraught
sleeves, tattered pant suits dragged begrudingly
through Boswellian resin. The versions of you
that didn't exist, all aggrieved but slowly learning
to accept the shadows.

The version of you that does exist, now
an extended, throbbing pain
slowly ceasing,
bound to disappoint the version of you that may exist later
then, without choosing,
being the nature of patterns.

If you squint you can almost see him riding the pale twilight along the speckled curvature. You can feel his presence in the air just beyond the horizon. In clenched teeth you can hear him in the transactional nature of love. He being body, he being commodity, he being the flea bitten innards of common courtesies.

If you let the blood pool into viscous puddles of amethyst you may get a sense of when he abandoned wonderment. A fecund scent of brief interludes, blessed in the private indescretions - you lie to yourself when the mirror can no longer reflect your delusions.

A wavy vision painted in distant heat, he is, perfectly still as Earth rotates in his temporal proximity. He being the discarded lakes pregnant with rusty cans and broken clocks.