They keep the air cold to slow the spread. A pale light draws you into existence, a bloom of city smoke and glass. I watch the shadow of your wrist thin as the sun dies. You turn your head away.

Everything thins. Houses shrink. Streetlamps burst. Organs wither. I walk for hours along the wharf. Rain trickles through broken windows and falls into the black harbour. Dust clots the waterways. Skin sheds.

The problem is you were born human. Turned away, you obliterate.

A woman swears at her crying child. She pulls his arm violently. Existence floods the air. A miasma of confusion, fear and hatred. The mirror turns outwards.

You rise with your bed. A fold in a sea of whiteness. It was your spine, they said. The thing holding you together. It was disintegrating, flattening to infinity.

There is nothingness. A flood of it. A pitiless swell that never ends and threatens to crush the world with every breath. Bated wait in a heart white as bone.

Years pass. The loop breaks and I reform it. You lie in a bed of stone. You sink beneath the nothingness of reality. Years pass. The loop breaks and I reform it. You lie in a bed of stone. You sink beneath the nothingness of reality. Years pass. The loop breaks and I reform it. You lie in a bed of stone. You sink beneath the nothingness of—

The IV fluid is imaginary. So is the taste of cold water beneath your tongue. It is a fractal world. A reality formed from a fragmented possi—haven’t I written this before?

There is a traffic accident. I am not there and neither are you. They pull you out of the wreckage, smoke rising from your chest, breast alight with hatred. You gaze at me, a stranger, and I break into shards, each one capturing you like a memento, a death drive.

Ash falls from the sky. I gaze up until I am blind. I reach my hand out and find the neck pulse of the earth. I find you.

I sit in the common room. I shuffle through pieces of myself. There is nothing here but you. Where am I? Where the **** am I? Where is the nothingness between you and I? Someone addresses me. I look up and find myself incapable of speech. I reach out but my arm fails to follow. I listen but cannot catch a word. The bell rings but you aren’t here. I look down. The pieces reflect nothing.

Reality collapses. Hypodermic crash to the libidinal economy. Desire and lack the same. Anticathexis sublimates into worthless ******* words on a document. Wren bursts black particles across the pavement, like cancerous soma running fingers through a spinal column. You smile. I sink. I sink.

The mind is sick with existence. Ganglia, myelin, dendritic sprawls. It all functions. It all works too well. Purpose, connection, reaction. I envy you. I *******—

Winter is here, bright, empty winter, almond grey and silent.

To select and understanding friends, with love and empathy.

    The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think


I never stopped to think,

The skin gets thin.

Then looking down, I saw my leg,

And there it was: the winter

Of my life in action: reneging,

Processing past youth - and losing.

Not amusing!

Definitely not!

Fragility, a new reality;

Oils, creams and salves to save

A youth no longer tangible.

Every syllable wail of decline.

Not fine,

Definitively not, not fine!

And yet, I saw the possi-probablity

That by design God is benign,

And if the wine goes sour

Some divine sweet guarantee

Will make it fine -

Despite the programmed skin of youth’s denial.

The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think; 2.5.2018 Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Birth, Death & In Between III;

Lea, you
shared your all with me
I knew your mind, heart, insides
I wish I’d known your body
My mind wandered
when we talked about nothing in my car
last summer
I think yours did too
You told your friends about our possi
bility..

Lea you
led me on and I liked it
Played that song in the car and the chemistry was tangible
Wore the tightest top you owned
And invited me everywhere
We laid down together
and my mind whirled
I think you knew
exactly what you did to me, kitten
with a string.

Lea you
Were one of the first to know about me
I’d liked another before you
But you were my real first
And once you led my heart astray
You said I’m sorry, and went away
My sister told me you and I
were better gal-pals than girlfriends
I can’t help but think of you still,
Sometimes.