my feet elbows knees toes eyeballs hurt, indistinct exhaustion that tastes like dehydration, and all those things but yet i don’t want to sleep, too cozy in my delight, drifting in the sparkling sea and effortless.


we none of us grow up really, we just are ourselves for longer and longer, the surprise is found in the cycle instead of the self, the love is never lost if perhaps just shown to make missteps now and again: the mistake is not the step but the logic of causal relationships—the stone which awakens and thus demands it flies.


and yet



i’ve been insulated from the worst damages of life, partly from privilege, partly from wit, partly from the lifelong type of luck which turns me away at the moment of the blow. but can more than one thing go right at once please, or perhaps i mean that the grinding effects of multiple vectors of failures and mishaps and generationally maladaptive self reliance are culminating into a general stance of stroking my joys gently, from the distance of belief that i must protect others from the foundational erosion, swanning through the halls of a sandcastle on a pacific shore, lifting skirts to dance over the sinkholes, brocade growing heavier every step from salt and braken and the infinity of the encroaching sea.


“what do you want from me” it whispers, but i curl my toes against its chill and light another cigarette.

“why did you build your home so close to the deep” it sighs, and i shuff my heel against the rug rolling over the uneven ground.




“i see you see me” it murmurs, but my vision is already blurred from a single drop of boiling water.