longing, we say, because desire is full/ of endless distances

no sleep all night means that there's too much on your mind and not enough that you're taking into your hands. give up on the mattress, too soft anyway. the back door has swung open in the night, and it's cold. my knees are purple, and the night is so dark that even i, half-blind, can see orion, up-side down, seeming to dangle by his sword. lean back over the porch rail until he's right side up again. walk around the living room, creak all the floorboards, pick things up and escort them around the room to new places. in the morning, it's still a mess, but different.

you're supposed to dissect your world into many parts, they want duality in the name of purpose, they want a tripartite character in the name of being well-adjusted. once the knife's in hand, the arbitrary nature of every cut is thrown into stark relief. no quartered flesh tonight.

a step backwards is still progress, somehow. it's not easy to aim high and be cut down by the way your own body fails: dear left lung, how did we get to this? i'll start by cutting you out, gently. then, poison the body. run it ragged up to the edge of death just to see if you haven't killed and if it won't kill itself. let it stagger on the line. if you can't sleep at night, there's too much on your mind, and not enough you're taking into your hands. i am afraid of folding myself into the same sheets that were mine a decade ago, as a half-way mark. not for long, just until you feel better, they said, and the lung was strong and took care of me. i am afraid that they will put her in the room we watched her mother die in, i will not let them put her in that room. i am afraid that every time we lean something falls, i am afraid i'm no bookend, and what falls will be in too many pieces, i am afraid i am not much with my hands. i am afraid of the wide roads that go nowhere in a town that grows wide and not deep, i am afraid of the buried self i might find in the sheets, forgotten for a decade buy never truly put to bed.