The garden fibbing quietly. As the brick feigned to break. Butterflies sneezing as I measured the gap between. Steps upwards. Same steps down.

The pin in her wings a grisly analogy. The color in his fingers quietly accusing. It always leaves. No matter how slowly. It's always dark, but I can still see. The marker as it bleeds through. The rain as it waits. For needful cheeks.

I am small enough. And still your pocket is empty. I add up the distance. In rotten meals. A tackle box of gestures tease the things below the surface. A confetti of skin blots out the sun.

As if alone has finally found purchase in these trenches where it has festered weakly for so long. The dungeon tell its stories. In cosmopolitan histrionics. While the blind children listen. And the deaf ones stare.

A ladder under her porch light. Still nothing. A whisper beneath her window. No one. In the darkness. She wakes up every cloud. To tell them it's not morning yet.

The room is always colder than it reads.

Knowing. The ugly is close. Pale dew on fragile stalks. Dirty footprints on the oft forgotten path. Scavengers and pirates. Confound the time machine. As it bolsters and brags. About. Places it will never reach.

The patriot in her denim skirt dazzles the war. With heavy grenades and red underwear. The socialist in her drunken stupor assaults the conservative in her clothes. Little lies and big ones. All the stories we write to prove they are wrong.

The dead arrive from the battlefield. In torn towels and dirty rags. Buckets full of choices full of holes. Pennies on the ante to lose everything again.

I might've known her once. Long ago. When the roads were still small. And we were going somewhere. I might've lied and said we had choices. Because I still wish we had.

The foci were interminable. Layers of time indistinguishable. Second thoughts. Thirds. And fourths. Wet beds in the morning. Drawing pictures in the piss.

Artists on about their visions. Posing the limbs of the dolls. The flat sheet over the fitted. The blanket on top of the pillows. Ugly girls with their faces buried in cliffs.

The edge. Pantomimes and trash heaps. Spoiled with the histrionics of missing skin. The levers on her breasts. Like half built time machines. Taking us away. To places we had always been. The chambers in her grief. Echoing. Spaces nothing could fill.

The sparse merchants of time. Grim pawns. On the heels of kings. Still talking. Though all are deaf.

Feeding the chameleon. Though the colors are gone. Just kingdom enough. If I keep my eyes closed.

Heavy books with no words in them. Her skin like tissue paper. Her thighs as fragile as glass ornaments. In all that snow I dug a space for him. Hurt that he thought I wouldn't do that.

Elastic ribbons on empty boxes. The future on idle. As we sped to our epilogues. Pale doormen usher us in to shinier cages. Bigger boxes.

I confront myself. This old women in my fist. To squeeze and hate. As I would any stranger. This old woman doused in my wrinkled skin. An ugly rendition of years to come.

Hours in minutes. Years in her grin. As the empty elevator moves away.

I've found my utopia. I'm still waiting for it to find me.

Caution signs and choking trumpets. Play tertiary songs below her dress. The math pressing hard on her diaphragm. As she solves for x. The clown comes in stutters. Fractured words fumble with the flesh. The circus follows.

Pandora with her walking sticks. Navigates a profound darkness. Pandora with her nearly empty box. Wraps it up. Gives it as a gift.

The edge moves closer as she notices how sharp. Her fingers all geometry. Her voice only algebra. She recognizes the numbers. But not what brought them here. She converses with the stairway. Convincing it to let her go down.

The world in gulps. The moment in sips. Crayons without their labels. Coloring in. Wolves feverish with morals. Girls mad with men. Her body is a factory. Making toys for strangers. Her touch is a fraction. Of what she might've been.

Pale faces on the assembly line. Blankly looking back at the pieces which became them. A paradox of answers for which there is no question. Other than us.

We were going there. In limps and stumbles. Life tends to create an abundance of traffic. We were going there. Not really planning on coming back.

The future in our laps. The past in our throats. A daisy chain of emotions. Cascading from that first moment through to the last. All the static. All the vague negotiations on the touch. Converging. On the tiny oracles in our hearts.

What would we do. What could we. It's time to forgive. Them. And ourselves.

I had presents. I had gifts I thought enough. I had everything I was supposed to have, but it still wasn't enough.

I had tried on the future. And it pretended to fit.

We were always going there. But still somehow, here is where we ended up.

Thieves and missionaries swarm the flesh. Saving everything and nothing. White questions on whiter pages. The door closed. And she was different. A statue molded by the wind. Melancholy with missing cures and abundant diseases.

The cupboards empty. The porch all dark. All those strangers small enough to pick up. Put back into their boxes.

Gesturing blithely to the fox. Obvious numbers spoil the clock. Her crotch counting. Eager rockets determined to launch.

It's only cold when I see the sun. The floor like glass. Cracking as I walk. Each fracture defining my path. It's ugly because I say it is. Lazy storms on the horizon. Charm the fictions of sour hearts.

Maybe nothing. In cautious choices. Arriving like blizzards. Leaving us much the same. Alone in our houses. Digging tunnels in the ice. Searching for that imaginary door. That lets us out. And keeps them in.

She woke me up. In the middle of the storm. Rogue adjectives struggle against the flow of the wind. Matchsticks in the breeze. Campfires in the ocean. The light only imagines we can see it. The flame reminisces about how hot.

It's nothing. Pompous parades trundling through the streets of the heart. My pistol on my hip. All my ammunition misplaced. It's only spaces. Pockets in time meant for the strangers in our skin.

Working the caution as well as any doll. Content with any dress that fits. The curtain falls too soon. But the audience remains.

The cat is poisoned, but only if I look inside the box.

Digging for the ground. So many breaths between us. Finding the soil. Broken lipsticks. Smudge the smile of the whore. Gentle kisses of cold as I struggle with the weight. Of winters just beginning. Unlikely to ever end.

A surplus of dead men. Threaten our white world. As it shimmers. Content to leave us stranded. In the prisons we call progress.

I found the exit eventually. I gave the wind foul nicknames. Until the road solidified under my cold fingers. I wrote to strangers. In broken heels and missing sunglasses.

Blind and squinting as I shovelled. Through their footprints in the snow.

Listen. She said. The cold is coming.

And I can't undo it. Because it would never have happened if I did.

Listen. The cold has so many plans for us. Nervous icicles pretending the sun doesn't matter. Shovels deep in the weight up the weather. Look for the sun.

The cold. The ice. It melts eventually. But not before everything is dead.

When we're alone again. This skin all peeled away. Empty cupboards on the wall. Heavy with missing shelves. Falling into their own shadows. As the wind embraces the rain. These minor fluctuations in gravity. That bring everything down around us. As if we were never that high. And never can be again.

The choices. Stiff with age. Creaking beds and closed curtains. Tempt the cold to determine. How graceful the end. Red markers on her belly. Black ink on her tits. They draw on her in color. Thin paper between their fingers. Playing the hare against the tortoise. Just minutes. Or maybe years. They are the same. From inside this question.

Not how. Or why. Just when. It changed. That child at the top of the steps. Looking down into the darkness. Curious and unafraid. Of what would come next. Still carrying those snowflakes in her pocket. Unaware that they had melted.

There is no such thing as rain. Only floods we don't drown in. It doesn't snow. It's always a blizzard. And I have to go out there. Test how deep it is. There is no such thing as cold. Just wanting. To know. If it's there.

No waiting for the words already come. Go back. Pick them up. If they can still be found. After the ice has melted.

It's cold. But no one shivers. Alone arrives in torn envelopes. Empty cages. Where the tiger once paced. Aching for that roar.

Of obvious dreams come to accept. The many limitations. Of flesh. Working the wound. To infection. Empty dollhouses spoil the illusion. As I pretend to remember.

Claws on the porch. Angry with the door. Eyes on the window. Blinded by the glass.

Lost. Because it isn't raining.

The compass was accurate. We were still facing north. Searching the sky for places the sun seldom visits. The compass was accurate. We were lost. In all directions. Somewhere else we'd never been.

The mortar setting on bricks just placed. The straw heavy with culpability. The wheeze of her skin. As she stumbles upon proper moments. Her resilient lungs breathing hotly into my chest. As I cross off the day on the calendar. Searching for the one where I began. Waiting for the end.

Humble dollhouses patent the obvious form. pasted breasts and longing lips feed the diarrhea in this foul house. I can smell the shit. The faineant passions of obtuse men. As they work so hard to obtain all the things they will never possess.

I make a notch in the chain on my time machine. As I consider the years that have come between us.

There is life to be found in these dead things we play with.

She wears her solvent frown. Forthcoming and obstinate. Her lips. Little ruffles of lace. To see through as they tumbled down over the sparse pinnacles of lonely mountains. A greater distance away that I would care to admit.

She tests the chamber. Variants all in place. As submission dissolves the stitches. Embedded too deep. For ordinary knives to undo. She kneels on the platform. As my machine hums beneath her legs. She moans softly as the gears begin to gyrate. Seduced by the science. In love with the experiment.

She leaves her shoes at the door. Deflated balloons full of dead stars. Walk no farther. As she obsesses over sleep and chance and other such mundane affectations. Of the shell she has collected. On that damp and briny shore. Where the wave are weak. And drowning is easy. If you've ever seen the ocean.

Bland appetizers. And pretentious main courses. And desserts that aren't very sweet at all.

She scratches her message into the door. As she leaves. Years. Like confetti fall. Blank strips of paper on the ground. Confess. A murder of sorts.

The mannequin on the cardboard stairs. Pretending to ascend. The empty skin. Hard and hollow. Cracks as I press on it. The same as the glass eyes she uses to see me with.

I would tell her stories. As if there was a difference between. Her and me. I would goad the monsters. Because fear always made sense to me. Little slivers caught in the skin that keep it from healing.

The eclipse coming as suddenly as their clothes came off. The hunt in layers. Difficult to undo. The smell of meat in the dogs' noses. As they suffered through the ethics of the kill.

The judge in her robe. Contemplating. My various futures. The bullets in her pocket looking for a chamber. Or any some excuse to hurt someone.

Gentle slopes. Leading up to taller hills. Butterflies giving away their wings. To eager time travellers. The octopus under her nightgown. Suffocating. The coke bottle in her vagina breaking. While she anticipates the molecules' surrender.

Seldom mazes. Turn around her faces. Barely fables. Coax the meat from her thighs. Raw strangers. Work their forks. Like the fangs on the wolf. She sees the forest. And it sees her. No blind except for everywhere else. Not afraid of the fangs.

Tiny methods in giant holes. Feel for that missing exit. She counts the leaves on every tree. Breaking each branch as she goes. Everywhere she's been. Nowhere she wants to go.

Not without her methods. Not confused at all. The numbers make more sense than anything else ever did. I catch the disease because it's mine to suffer through. I catch the disease because it must be caught. If ever I am to be immune.

It's just the chocolate. The candy dripping from her lips. That steals her in little nibbles. Small pieces taken. Regret the whole. Thin kites press the wind. Red fingers cling to an empty string.

She sleeps on the edge of the bed.

Dreaming she'll fall.

The dust under the TV. That she knew belonged there. At least until she'd seen all it could show her. Was hostile. Barking bad dreams through a cloud of reruns. Her body standing over the stove. She saw it. Like a missing rung. On the ladder she was trying to escape down.

Stubborn windows let their ugly eyes in. Refusing the rain as well as they accept the sun. Soft doorknobs. Give her fingers something to mold. As she anticipates empty rooms.

There's nothing to know. Except this surrender. The minor catastrophes of broken skin. That leave their marks on our bones.

The atom on the window sill. Eager for collision. Her skin. Not listening. As I tell it how to feel.

I've been here. And I will be here again. I taste them. Choices. Ripe with confessions I've yet to make.

She wears her geometry in seldom contraries. Masks undone. At the base of the skin. The blade referring. To dead machines. In pales comparisons. Of the apologies we've become. The pistol in the bullet. Debating the structure of the wound. The weight of the bandage. Pressure enough. To stop the bleeding.

She wears people in shapes. Calm documentaries. Confident within their system of pulleys. That they can lift the heaviest of their empty boxes. Trying on the the uniform. Forlorn at the prospect. Of deciding. If it's real. Or if it ever was.

Her scissors paused on the arm of a paper doll. Just one. So many. That button already pressed. Just waiting. For the afterward.

What happens when everything already has. Happened. What use is the wolf in the story. Without a child to eat.

What good is a villain without a hero.

Therein is my dilemma. The woods to her house are dark. But it's magnificent. That I can't see where I'm going.

Small wrinkles in the linens. Foretell of potent switches. Broken teddy bears and empty pajamas. Stir the notion. Of tomorrow. Small drops of blood in a vast ocean. Diluted. Lost.

Wake up! The ghost shouts in her head. As she falls back to sleep. To resume counting the little pigs. Whose houses have been blown down.

I'm just waiting for a suitable moment. To tear that ladder apart. I'm just too fascinated by the needle hanging from her arm. To call it what it is. This fairy tale sick with skin. Burping from inside her cure.

It's better. But only because. I don't listen anymore.

Parenthesis. In this fists of impotent gods. That's all we are.

I wait for the winter to leave. I wait for years, but it never does.

The math left her cold. Years worth of numbers. Blindly telling the world stories about her. To the chagrin of indifferent equations. Numbers. She winced. Are all we are. Heavy rocks. To be pounded. Until. The pieces are small enough. That we can carry on.

This skin. A flippant device. To feign the world still listens. When I scream.

These fingers. Brittle sticks to press sticky buttons. On the tired machines. We've devised to relive. The moments that failed us. The empty basket. In her arms. As she wrestles with the concept of the wolf.

Going back is easy. Simple physics.

It's every other direction where I get stuck.

She asks me to try on her pitchfork. And I do. Choosing my devils. She whispers from inside a cardboard fortress. That the world is small enough to fit in her pocket. And I find it there. In the depths of her pants.

My own pockets are empty. My own time machine faulty. But she is still running. How far I don't know.

Empty shoes on the porch. Solving for missing feet. The enigma of sleep waking her up again. To find out. That she is still dreaming, Nightgowns in the attic. Whispering loud. As she shed these extraneous skins. Windows in the roof. Filtering the sunlight on her bed. Through exhaustive shadows.

The world come in paces. Wobbling on weak knees. The gravity come in multiples. Times force. Time mass. Time the distance. There is. To fall.

Waiting for the wolf. In the rumble of the bricks. Blown down. Searching for the switch. In the dark rooms. Where these pictures tend to develop.

I don't see. Can't. Won't. Don't remember how to. These numbers know us.

The force exceeds the mass. There's only gravity to blame. Only friction to explain. if and when. We stop.

The ladder between her legs is broken. No easy way down. The gap in her abdomen. Teases darkness. In manic theories. the geometry of how. Something so small can weigh so much.

The weather wears us. In heavy scarves. As these coats come off. Despite the cold. Umbrellas closed. Even though it's still raining. A series. Of empty needles. Left in that crease. As I try to pull myself up.

Shuffling these skins. Paper dolls losing their grasp. Physics the same as love. Not understanding. How near the end is. I coax the demon out of its hiding place. Intending to destroy it. I convinced the demon to come closer. Not knowing. It was was already there.

It's just old wood. Still burning under the soil we toss on it. Red fingers. And torn underpants. Aflame in this weak body's rotting jack o lantern. The weather like a tired compass. Pointing me in directions I'm too scared to go.

The rain. As stubborn as I am. Still falling.

The backdoor stayed open even after he had gone. Parables in arithmetic. Dividing by what is left. After all the remainders are forgotten. Ghosts caught between stages. The larva and the butterfly. Telling their stories in vomit and piss.

Struggling with the fractions. The process of sinking comes to her in songs. The pencil breaks. But she's only angry that she doesn't need to draw the pictures anymore.

The heroes come in silly colors. Form fitting tights. The forest opens its jaws. To chew on obvious villains. I try on his face. But the words don't come out.

The universe laughs at my misunderstanding of it. My choice. I choose this flawed time line.

She doesn't tell him, but she's thinking. This is exactly how I imagined it.

Every window broken. Every door still shut.

The stem. Obsequious antecedent. With fingers in the pudding. Foul desserts bury the story in heavy tongues. A world away. Dead things are not. The obvious of other worlds. Not my scapegoat. Lukewarm flames. Taunt the fire. As it dazzles the rain. With broken fists.

The elevator stops. Between floors. I get off anyway. The man in his tuxedo panting. Stale poetry. The girl in his gown. unravelled as her cheap stockings.

The murder comes in random sequences. I chase the future as fast as I am chased by it. Weaving between worlds. In a pattern simple enough to deconstruct. The rabbit in its race trusting. Natural force. The tortoise in its shell. Assuming justice.

Neither. Both. Are rewarded.

The time on her wrist. In paranoid breaths. Reaches for the atoms. As they accelerate. The truth in her skin. Turns over the rock.

Finds nothing underneath.

There is a moment when all these worlds collide. Past. Present. Future. There is a chances that all these gods will die. And we will be able to live again.

The afterward was diminished. By so many occurrences. The dalliant loops. That are skin and expression. Writing her stories in bits of blood. Left behind. On the jackals' fangs. After the beast has been quelled. The hunger has subsided.

It's like I was never there at all. Potent pillows spew their poison sleep. I rest in failed suicides. I awake to stalled dreams. Everything is gone. And the spaces it once occupied are so obvious.

The soft duckling turning colors in our charge. The empty baskets we carry to the houses of the deceased. Each misstep cutting the pictures into her skin. Colorless tattoos. Implicate her skin.

Grandmother in her closet. The wolf. All too comfortable in her bed.

Lifetimes to build these time machines. Hours. Years. Tortoises racing arrogant hares. The needle in the groove. Reiterating that same tired scratch.

A skeleton all time. Deliberately machine. A flesh just the opposite. The truth comes in a cold purchase. A shelter of conditions. We cheat the future. In chokes of desperate skin. We tell our stories in broken contractions. I lie. Pretend I know. How close it was. How far away it is.

I wait. For the world to discover my absence. I count the candies that make up the house. I tease the time machines. With moments of clarity.

As if I am there. Can explain how right such an empty world feels.

Gravity weak. The girth of conductivity heavy on her cheeks. The art of her frown painting me. In different shades of the same pigment. Slaughtered pigs. The bacon ripe in their bellies. Black holes interrupting. The manic collision of divergent atoms. On their way to when. It mattered.

The monkey's hand on the last page of the book. The penny in the puddle. Teasing the rain with fading fingerprints. The wish. The awful guilt. Of wanting things to have been different.

The clowns. Coming out of their cramped houses. Their red noses barely hanging onto their faces. Execution. Is where we are weak. The circus. The acrobats. Falling gracefully. Connection fails the students. The animals in cages. The rusted zipper on that devil. Whispering in colors I can't see.

I understand now. This effusive enemy. Gravity. Not as strong as I am. But so much more determined.