Jupiter in a Wheelchair

The lever hummed against the pull of gravity. It's just a machine she cautioned herself while punching in the numbers. Convincing the dark to listen with broken knobs and dead batteries. You could be travelling time. Or just imagining the dead still remember you.

Either way. You're lost. Left dancing to that dial tone as if you've never known anything else.

Teasing the crocodile in your nightgown with bits of skin. Hoping to be bitten. Just to prove there is still blood flowing under this cement. The hours are anonymous. As they strut into our lives on thick ropes of touch. Grabbing. Pulling at that thick goat's skin. Imagining the word in geometry. Squares and triangles shape the moments to fit my logic.

Falling down. Ledges never meant to last over swimming pools of if. It there has ever been a start. Or a possibility of an end.

I left the machine on too long. Woke up to so many of us. We charted the weeks we had glimpsed and decided we still didn't know where we were. So how could we leave? Someplace we'd never been.

There is only the first taste and the last. All the test is lies. There is the first. Long planks lead me to the water. Where I've already drowned. There is the last. Shit on my shoes. That is there no matter where I walk.

All the time I've travelled. Big men. And the little ones. Pockets in a long storm. The falls relentless. Smearing the ink. Into something almost legible.

I leave all those places. Not knowing. I was ever there. I rake those leaves. Into piles. Stubbornly ignoring the wind.