that my longing could be unknown to you seems as lonely as the ocean

and as cold, and as deep, and as tearless and blue. as wide. as full of unknown things. as impossible to swim across. as impossible to drink away. as impossible to breathe through.

on my shelf sit the whiskey and the dark chocolate and the bitterest of aperitifs. the truffle oil, the vinegar, the crusty bread, the apples, the onions, the beets. andrew bird's violin cries over the sound of hot water and hot foam running frenzied over my hands and the dishes, lavender soap scent and rosemary from the soup, my palms and the bowls slick with the grease of the chicken carcass boiled perfectly and long, the marrow from the bones of a caged life passing through my body, building the marrow in the bones of my caged life, my poorly translated life. the yellow light in the kitchen on the beautiful bowls and plates i spent hours scavenging at emmaüs, my world that i carefully construct around me out of small found objects and other people's thrown away lives, things that i carefully stack, things that i precariously arrange, framework things that hold out all the frothing dark that i can't let in, that i want always roiling outside the thickest windows, the oilpaper windows, the ancient false windows, this glass that lies mouthlessly about everything i can see but not touch, glass memories of what came before, more real to me now than even myself for being so unknown here. is it safer? i don't believe in the safe thing. i sliced and ate a root of ginger to rid my stomach of the bad that that keeps trying to claw out of my throat, i drank enough whiskey to burn a hole through to the other side of my body, to pass from my lips to my lungs, to my stomach and out again through my back, slip away and drain through the ancient sewers of paris, illusory city of lights and unkept promises, i wanted a future, but every step i take just stacks up the wall of my past

if your body were here, all i'd really like to do is punch it. not to hurt you or even try to, just to know that my fists aren't swinging at nothing, just to know