every blessing
is the other side of a curse
but the same cannot be said
always of the reverse.
(though i may tell a lie of privileged lives.)

saturated with angst,
i don't go with the flow:
i sink.

the body i live with
does not appreciate
the thoughts that keep it restless
in the early hours,
the ones i won't part with.

a circle:
the difference between what it contains
and what it is contained by;
an empty form;
an opening;
without beginning, without end;
found in solitude perfect;
a thing that is a soul.

i cannot reach you
like the thing-in-itself:
i can only think you
and know you exist,
sublimely, like this isolated love
that was inscribed in all the virtual scope of space
even anterior to the time of the arche-fossil;
a tiny tragedy promised by eternity
made manifest in the place called here and now
by way of infinite, complicit, contingent physics.
and all this for no reason at all.
a beautiful, traumatic vista that sometimes reveals
questions that cannot be answered and the beyond.
and if it were all to collapse for no reason at all,
what would it matter?
at least then, i would not need to reach you.

your exotic skin
sends echoing through me
drums
that demand adventure.
bless—curse them, making me tremble.

a child falls over:
i laugh
through the tears.